In preparation for the siege on Mosul, the Iraq Army, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, attacked ISIL positions in Nineveh province on March 24, capturing several villages to the East, officials said. He said he was not aware of any link between him and this week’s terrorist attacks in Brussels.
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U.S. forces killed the Islamic State group’s second-in-command this week, dealing a blow to the extremists’ ability to conduct operations in Iraq, Syria and overseas, Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Friday.
Carter said several key members of the group were eliminated this week.
“In both Syria and Iraq we’re seeing important steps to shape what will become crucial battles in the months to come”, Carter told reporters, according to the Department of Defense (DoD) website.
The news follows the Pentagon’s Friday announcement of a plan to deploy additional American combat troops to Iraq to accelerate military operations against Daesh terrorists.
“We have a series of recommendations that we will discuss with the president in the coming weeks to further enable our support for the Iraqi security forces”, said General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
 ” I think theres a lot of reasons for us to be optimistic about the next several months, ” Dunford said.
Carter declined to say whether al-Qaduli had been killed by a drone strike or in a bombing raid involving manned aircraft; nor would he specify whether the attack occurred in Syria or Iraq, though he said that any action in Iraq would only have been taken with Iraqi government approval.
Carter said Qaduli had been in the ranks of ISIL, also known as ISIS, since its earliest incarnaton as al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq. He said he had worked under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a liaison for operations in Pakistan. In November, the Pentagon said an airstrike in Libya killed Abu Nabil, another top IS leader.
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The United States recently set up a small Marines artillery outpost in northern Iraq to protect the nearby Iraqi military base in Makhmour – the likely staging ground for a Mosul assault.
