Washington:
Iraqi air strikes killed a senior Islamic State group chief and three different terrorists, the US army introduced Friday, saying the strikes had been enabled by intelligence from the worldwide anti-jihadist coalition.
“Iraqi safety forces (ISF) performed precision airstrikes in northeastern Iraq on October 14 that killed 4 members of the terrorist group ISIS, together with a senior chief,” the US Central Command (CENTCOM) stated in an announcement on social media, utilizing an acronym for the Islamic State group.
“The Iraqi-led strikes had been performed to disrupt and degrade ISIS assault networks in Iraq and had been enabled by technical help and intelligence from coalition forces,” CENTCOM stated.
It stated the chief who bought killed was the group’s most senior official in northern Iraq, figuring out him as Shahadhah Allawi Salih Ulaywi al-Bajjari and saying he was often known as Abu Issa.
Iraq’s Joint Operations Command had beforehand stated in an announcement that F-16 warplanes carried out strikes on October 14 in Kirkuk province that killed 4 terrorists, “one in every of them an vital chief.”
The strikes got here after US and Iraqi forces performed a joint operation in late August that CENTCOM stated killed 14 Islamic State group members, amongst them 4 leaders.
The USA has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria as a part of the coalition, which Washington and Baghdad introduced final month will finish its decade-long army mission in Iraq inside a yr.
The announcement adopted months of talks between the USA and Iraq on the way forward for the coalition, which was established in 2014 to assist native forces retake swathes of territory seized by the jihadists there and in neighboring Syria.
The coalition will proceed its army operation in Syria, with worldwide troops permitted to help anti-jihadist operations there from Iraq till September 2026.
IS was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019, however jihadist fighters proceed to function in distant desert areas though they now not management territory.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by EDNBOX employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)