Hajji Mutazz, ISIS deputy leader, killed in US airstrike in Iraq

“I describe Baghdadi as a shepherd, and his deputies are the dogs who herd the sheep”, said Hisham al-Hashimi, a security analyst who studied Isil’s leadership structure. He was a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor group to the Islamic State.

A terse statement by the White House Friday night says Mutazz was “prominently involved in directing ISIS finance operations”.

The second-in-command of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group was killed during a US air strike in Iraq on Tuesday, according to the White House.

Alberto Fernandez, vice president at the Middle East Media Research Institute, said he is confident that, this time, al-Hayali is actually dead.

Hayali’s prominent role in the organization first became clear previous year after Iraqi forces raided the house of Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, a top Islamic State commander, just days before the fall of the northern city of Mosul last June.

A drone strike last month killed a senior leader in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

US officials said Hayali, also known as Hajji Mutazz, died after his vehicle was attacked in Monsul, stating that his death would put a hole on IS operations.

The US began conducting strikes in Iraq on 8 August past year, and in Syria on 23 September.

Al-Hayali was erroneously reported to have been killed in November by airstrikes. And almost as many say they disapprove of his handling of the relationship with Iran, a significant finding in the lead up to the congressional vote on the administration’s nuclear deal with Tehran.

Al-Hayali was an army colonel under Saddam Hussein and served in the regime’s military intelligence and special forces units.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, said al-Hayali was an Iraqi national and had been a member al-Qaida’s Iraq affiliate during the U.S. war in Iraq.

Obama gets the worst marks for his handling of the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, with 62 percent disapproving.

“Right now all the U.S.is trying to do is kill our way out of the problem”, Harmer said.