Just weeks after ISIS suffered a major loss when its chief spokesman was taken out in an air attack, the United States announced it had quickly killed his designated successor in a strike.
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A senior U.S. official told CNN Friday that a drone was used to carry out the strike.
A USA air strike this month killed a senior Islamic State militant who oversaw the group’s information and propaganda activities, the Pentagon said on Friday.
“On Sept. 7, coalition forces conducted a precision strike near Raqqah, Syria, that targeted and killed “Dr. Wa’il”, also known as Wa’il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, one of ISIL’s most senior leaders”.
The US has now killed in the last two months two of the “very few” ISIS leaders with direct access to Baghdadi, the official said.
Al-Adnani was successfully struck and killed by coalition forces on August 30, he added.
“Wa’il oversaw ISIL’s production of terrorist propaganda videos showing torture and executions [and] was a close associate of Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the ISIL spokesman and leader for plotting and inspiring external terror attacks”.
An anti-ISIS group, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, earlier told CNN’s Hamdi Alkhshali that Salman was killed in a drone strike on September 7 in Raqqa, Syria.
A top propagandist for the Islamic State, responsible for crafting the terror group’s ultra-violent jihadi narrative online, was killed in a coalition airstrike in Syria.
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The US had offered $5m for the death or capture of Adnani, who was originally from the western Syrian province of Idlib and joined the militant movement in Iraq, where he fought under late al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
