A senior ISIS operative was killed in an airstrike by the US-led coalition in Syria, the Pentagon said on Friday.
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A coalition air strike in Syria has killed a senior Islamic State in Iraq nd Syria (ISIS) operative considered the group’s information minister, a week after another raid eliminated a top ISIS strategist, the Pentagon said on Friday (Sept 16).
“We will continue to work with our coalition partners to build momentum in the campaign to deal ISIL a lasting defeat”, the press secretary said.
He was behind the group’s videod beheadings of foreign journalists and aid workers as well as the countless of Syrian and Iraqi civilians, over the past few years.
NPR’s Tom Bowman tells our Newscast unit that “for months now, the USA military has made a priority of targeting senior leaders of the Islamic State, killing such leaders as ‘Jihadi John, ‘ the nickname for British citizen Mohammed Emwazi”, who appeared in execution videos involving Western hostages.
He was one of the IS group’s most high-profile figures with a $5m (£3.8m) bounty on his head. Adnani was a close associate of Wa’il. He was also known to be part of the Shura Council, ISIS’s leadership body and religious authority.
The online activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently reported the death of Fayad, also known as Abu Mohamed Furqan, earlier in the day on Twitter.
Al-Adnani was described as the IS spokesman and believed to have planned external terror attacks in the west.
As the Obama administration targets Islamic State leaders from the air, the US military is hoping to accelerate the ground campaign against the group in both Syria and Iraq.
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“Significant operations carried out on his watch include the Paris attacks, the Brussels airport attack, the Istanbul airport attack, the downing of the Russian airliner in the Sinai, the suicide bombings during a rally in Ankara and the attack on a cafe in Bangladesh”, the official said.
