Airstrikes burned hundreds of millions of IS dollars — US

Hundreds of millions of dollars are believed to have been destroyed in coalition air strikes targeting cash hoards used to finance the Islamic State group, a US military spokesman says.

Coalition aircraft struck 10 more of the cash collection points over the weekend, said Colonel Steve Warren, the spokesman for the US-led campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria.

“We don’t have a hard number that we’re prepared to release. We believe it is in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Warren tells Pentagon reporters in a video conference from Baghdad.

“Obviously it is impossible to burn up every single bill. So presumably they were able to collect a little bit of it back. But we believe it was a significant series of strikes that have put a real dent in their wallet,” he says.

— AFP