The second-in-command of the Islamic State died in a U.S. airstrike near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul earlier this week in what the White House described Friday as a blow to the group’s operations. Mutazz was “instrumental in planning operations over the past two years, including the ISIL offensive in Mosul in June 2014”, said U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Ned Price in a statement provided to reporters. That type of information suggests the United States has some ability to target and strike some of the most senior officials in ISIS. His “death will adversely impact ISIL’s operations given that his influence spanned ISIL’s finance, media, operations, and logistics”, a White House press release read. Just last month, a senior leader was killed by a drone strike in Syria.
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He was later arrested on a terrorism charge and spent years in Camp Bucca, a US-run prison in Iraq.
Al-Hayali reportedly served as a colonel in military intelligence under the late dictator Saddam Hussein, who was overthrown in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. “The United States and its coalition partners are determined to degrade and destroy this terrorist group which has wrought so much harm and suffering on the people of the region and beyond”, Price said.
A U.S. official acknowledged that, but said the death was damaging to the group’s reputation. “That said, the death of Mutazz removes a key figure from ISIL and further pierces the group’s veneer of invincibility that it has sought to cast”.
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Also killed in Tuesday’s air strike was an ISIL media operative known as Abu Abdullah, Price said.
