“They are senior, they are experienced”, Carter told a Pentagon news conference.
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The Pentagon says US forces have killed a senior Islamic State leader.
Explaining the significance of this particular figure, Carter noted, “We’ve taken out the leader who oversees the funding for ISIL’s operations, hurting their ability to pay fighters and hire recruits”. “The momentum of this campaign is now clearly on our side”, Carter stated.
Carter made the announcement with Joint Chiefs Chairman Marine Gen. Joe Dunford at a news conference on Friday morning at the Pentagon.
“Our enemies are one and the same”, he declared. However, Washington later denied that coalition planes had struck a mosque.
It was not clear whether the operation involved members of the USA military’s special operations task force that has been based in Iraq since early this year.
Al-Qaduli had been listed on the State Department’s Rewards for Justice website, with a bounty of $7 million.
Earlier this month, the Islamic State’s “emir of war” Abu Omar al-Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen, was killed after a U.S. air strike in northeastern Syria.
Al-Qaduli was born in Mosul in either 1957 or 1959.
He joined al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) – a precursor of IS – in 2004 under the leadership of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, serving as his deputy and the local leader in Mosul, according to the US.
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He was captured and jailed by Iraqi authorities but was released in 2012, at which point he rejoined the terror group in Syria, according to the U.S. State Department.
