WASHINGTON: The Pentagon says a top Daesh leader in Iraq’s Anbar province has been killed by a coalition airstrike.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook says Abu Wahib and three others were killed when their vehicle was struck on May 6 in Rutba. He says Wahib’s death is a blow to the group’s leadership.
A senior US official said it was an American airstrike.
Cook says Wahib was a former member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and has appeared in Daesh execution videos. There have been unconfirmed reports in the past suggesting Wahib was targeted by strikes, but this is the first time the Pentagon has said he was killed.
Meanwhile, Daesh said on Tuesday it had downed a Syrian Army helicopter in a desert area of central Syria where heavy fighting is going on, the militant group and a monitor said.
Amaq, a news agency associated with Daesh, said the helicopter was shot down near in the Palmyra desert between Homs and Palmyra city.
The terrorists were also disrupting army supply lines and attacking the Mahr and Jazal gas fields, in an area which contains the country’s largest gas reserves and facilities that once generated much of its electricity needs.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the terrorists were gaining new ground. It said that on Tuesday they seized a deserted military barracks 10 km north of the Syrian military’s T4 airport, near where the helicopter was reportedly downed.
Daesh leader killed in Anbar
Daesh leader killed in Anbar
Thirty four Australians released from Syrian camp holding Daesh affiliated families
- Roj camp holds more than 2,000 people from 40 different nationalities, the majority of them women and children
ROJ CAMP: Syrian Kurdish forces on Monday released 34 Australians from a camp holding families of suspected Daesh militants in northern Syria, saying they would be flown to Australia from Damascus.
Hukmiya Mohamed, a co-director of Roj camp, told Reuters that the 34 Australians had been released to members of their families who had come to Syria for the release. They were put on small buses for Damascus.
Roj camp holds more than 2,000 people from 40 different nationalities, the majority of them women and children.
Thousands of people believed to be linked to Daesh militants have been held at Roj and a second camp, Al-Hol, since the militant group was driven from its final territorial foothold in Syria in 2019.
Syrian government forces seized swathes of northern Syria from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in January, before agreeing a ceasefire on January 29.
The US military last week completed a mission to transfer 5,700 adult male Daesh detainees from Syria to Iraq.
