Pentagon: Two senior figures from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) were killed by a US-led coalition air strike near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, on June 25 the Pentagon official said on Friday.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement that Basim Muhammad Ahmad Sultan al-Bajari a former al- Qaeda member who also led an IS battalion known for using homemade explosives, suicide bombers and mustard gas in its attacks, and Hatim Talib al-Hamduni, a military commander in Mosul killed in the raid.
Cook said. “Their deaths, along with strikes against other ISIL leaders in the past month, have critically degraded ISIL’s leadership experience in Mosul and removed two of their most senior military members in northern Iraq.”
In June, Iraq’s military claimed victory in a U.S.-backed offensive against Islamic State forces in Falluja and set its sights on an offensive against the jihadists who hold Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.