The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria has killed the group’s finance minister and two other senior leaders in air strikes in recent weeks, a U.S. military spokesman said on Thursday (December 10).
Army Colonel Steve Warren told a Pentagon briefing that coalition strikes had killed Abu Salah, Islamic State’s financial minister, as well as a senior leader responsible for coordinating the group’s extortion activities and another leader who acted as an executive officer.
Warren also said Iraqi forces have made major gains in the Islamic State stronghold of Ramadi.
Islamic State “are acting more like a conventional army is because they have more conventional goals,” Warren said.
This approach has informed the U.S.-led coalition’s training according to Warren who said they are no longer training Iraqi forces to fight a counter-insurgency as they had in the past and are instead preparing them for a ground war — a point which could prompt questions about the possibility of an expanded U.S. presence in the country.
Warren then showed aerial video of Iraqi tanks firing on a neighborhood near Kirkuk to deter car bombs from entering and disrupting efforts to create berms in the area.
The U.S. commander called the operation a significant example of “combined arms operations.” (Reuters)
