Islamic State’s second-in-command and other senior leaders were likely killed this week in a major offensive targeting financial operations, US Defence Secretary Ash Carter says.

Carter told a Pentagon press briefing that the US believes it killed Haji Iman, a senior leader in charge of finances for the self-declared caliphate, and Abu Sarah, who Carter said was charged with paying fighters in northern Iraq.

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US Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the briefing the deaths reflected “indisputable” new momentum in the fight against Islamic State.

Abu Alaa al-Afari, also known as Haji Iman, is said to have been killed in an airstrike.
US State Dept.

US special forces carried out the strike against Haji Iman, officials told Reuters. One of the officials said that plan was to capture, not kill, him but a decision was made to fire from the air.

Coalition soldiers rarely operate in Islamic State-held parts of Iraq, where there are no friendly forces to help if a mission runs into trouble.

Dunford said he expected to increase the level of US forces in Iraq from the current 3800 and bolster the capabilities of Iraqi forces preparing for a major offensive against Islamic State in Mosul, but that those decisions had not been finalised.

“We are systematically eliminating ISIL’s cabinet,” Carter said, using another acronym for the group.

The strike comes amid growing pressure on Islamic State, which is steadily losing territory in Iraq and Syria to US-backed forces.

While the operational significance of removing Haji Iman from the battlefield is not yet clear, it is the latest in a series of strikes against the group’s top leaders, including Abu Omar al-Shishani, described by the Pentagon as the group’s “minister of war,” and a senior Islamic State chemical weapons operative captured by Iraq-based US commandos and turned over to the Iraqi government.

Carter said the killing of Haji Iman, who also went by Abd ar-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli and other aliases and who was imprisoned in the region until 2012, would hamper the group’s ability to operate inside and outside of Iraq and Syria. But he conceded that alone was not sufficient to cripple it.