In a significant development in the fight against the Islamic State, the group’s finance chief has been confirmed killed in a coalition air strike last month, US officials said on December 10. Abu Saleh was killed in late November, US military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said in a videoconference from Baghdad, calling him “one of the most senior and experienced members” of the group’s financial network.
The US envoy for the anti-IS fight, Brett McGurk, said on twitter that Abu Saleh was killed along with two associates “as part of coalition campaign to destroy ISIL’s financial infrastructure. He described him as the group’s “finance minister.”
Described in a State Department terrorist blacklist as a 42-year-old Iraqi, Abu Saleh’s real name was Muwaffaq Mustafa Muhammad al-Karmush. “Killing him and his predecessors exhausts the knowledge and talent needed to coordinate funding within the organization,” Mr Warren said.
The IS leaders in Syria and Iraq have been targeted by the US-led coalition with air strikes to dismantle the group’s command structure. After the attacks in Paris, the United States said it is deploying a special operations unit in Iraq that will be able to mount raids into Syria to capture or kill IS leaders.
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