Airstrike Kills ISIS Minister of Information, Pentagon Says

The US targeted and killed ISIS leader Wael Adel Salman, aka Abu Muhammed Furqan, in a September 7 airstrike, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement issued Friday.

A coalition air strike in Syria has killed a senior Daesh operative considered the group’s information minister, a week after another raid eliminated a top Daesh strategist, the Pentagon said Friday. The statement said he was in charge of terror propaganda videos that showed executions.

The Pentagon also said that it had deployed dozens of US Special Operations Forces to Syria’s border with Turkey to fight the Daesh group at Ankara’s request in support of the Turkish military and vetted Syrian rebels.

A US official described Wa’il as outranking al-Adnani as one of ISIS senior leaders, possibly number three in its hierarchy, who had special access to the group’s top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

With the help of al-Adnani, Al-Fayad is believed to have overseen the production of the gruesome propaganda videos, often featuring torture and executions.

Wa’il’s death is the latest in a series of successful attacks on senior ISIS leadership, specifically the group’s “original leadership”, a senior USA intelligence official told NBC News.

Al-Adnani was targeted by an airstrike on August 30 as he rode in a vehicle near the Syrian town of al-Bab.

“The removal of ISIL’s senior leaders degrades its ability to retain territory, and its ability to plan, finance, and direct attacks inside and outside of the region”, Cook said.

Still, ISIS has suffered numerous losses in leadership-as many as 120 people this year, according to some estimates-and it is getting squeezed from the territory it controls in Syria and Iraq. The Pentagon said the two men were close associates.