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Army Colonel Steve Warren
Army 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.
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.