Smoke rises after an airstrike by US-led coalition warplanes as Iraqi security forces advance towards the Shuhada neighborhood of Fallujah, Iraq, Friday, June 3, 2016, during fighting between Iraqi security forces and the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed)
Some 13 senior Islamic State figures, including the brother-in-law of the terror group’s leader, were killed in an airstrike in Iraq, the Iraqi joint operations command reported on Saturday.
The airstrike on Friday in the Iraqi town of al-Qaim in Anbar province, near the border with Syria and some 400 km northwest of the capital Baghdad, killed Ahmed Hassan Abu Kheir, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s brother in law as well as one of his deputies, according to Saudi news channel al-Arabiya.
The Iranian al-Alam channel identified the deputy by the nom de guerre Abu Qasourah, a deputy war minister in the Islamic State.
At least 11 other IS terrorists were injured in the air raid, according to the report.
A number of foreign fighters were among the 13 fatalities, including from Russia and Chechnya, the Iraqi command reported.
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File: Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi giving a sermon. (screen capture: YouTube)
A laboratory used to make improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and a weapons depot were also destroyed in the strike, according to the Iraqis.
Much of Anbar province has been under IS control since it swept through Iraq and parts of Syria in a blitz beginning in January 2014,
Over the past six months, IS has lost significant parts of the territory north and west of Baghdad with the help of the US-led coalition and Iranian-backed Shiite militia forces.
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