© www.primanews.orgArmy Colonel Steve Warren
Army Colonel Steve Warren, a US military spokesman, told reporters on Thursday that Abu Saleh, a 42-year-old Iraqi, was killed in late November. "He was one of the most senior and experienced members of ISIL's financial network and he was a legacy al-Qaeda member," Warren said. "Killing him and his predecessors exhausts the knowledge and talent needed to coordinate funding within the organization," he added. According to reports, Abu Salah's real name is Muafaq Mustafa Mohammed al- Karmoush.
The Pentagon spokesmen said two other ISIL figures -- Abu Mariam and Abu Waqman al-Tunis -- were also killed in coalition airstrikes in November.
Brett McGurk, America's special envoy to the international coalition against Daesh, said on Twitter that Abu Saleh was killed along with two associates "as part of coalition campaign to destroy ISIL's financial infrastructure." McGurk called Abu Saleh the group's "finance minister."
Daesh terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Iraq and Syria.
The US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes since September 2014 against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate. US warplanes have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq since August 2014. Some Western states have also participated in some of the strikes in Iraq.
The US-led coalition has done little to stop the Daesh's advances in parts of Syria and in western Iraq. Some analysts have criticized the US-led military campaign, saying the strikes are only meant to benefit US weapons manufacturers. The US military has fired off more than 20,000 missiles and bombs since it launched an open-ended bombing campaign against Daesh more than a year ago, according to the US Air Force.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said in a statement on Friday that it is fast running out of munitions stockpiles and called for an increase in funding and production of weapons. The Air Force is now "expending munitions faster than we can replenish them."
The US Air Force has made a request for additional funding for Hellfire missiles and is planning to boost weapons production to refill its depleting stocks.
Comment: Did the US really kill these high-up militants or are they just desperate to take credit? Either way, the US/NATO assaults are illegal, without UN sanction and in violation of international law when done, as in Syria, without sovereign authorization. Actually hitting a real Daesh target with real results (such as killing its finance chief) was likely the last thing they wanted to do. Usually, every bullet counts. Protecting their asset, no bullet counts. The conundrum is there is nothing to show for their publicized effort except richer weapons manufacturers and depleted munition stocks.