Coalition airstrike kills IS senior member in Mosul

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) –Head of the Islamic State (IS) police was killed in Western Mosul on Tuesday by a US-led anti-IS Coalition airstrike.

Coalition planes on February 14 targeted an IS position in Mosul and killed Haqi Ismael al-Hadidi, head of IS police in Nineveh Wilaiyat.

According to information obtained by the Kurdistan Region Security Council’s (KRSC) Counter Terrorism Department the IS senior member and his companions were killed in western side of the city of Mosul.

An Iraqi intelligence officer, Abdulsalam al-Jibour said that accurate intelligence provided by his organization led to the death of al-Hadidi who is also known as Abu Ahmed.

On Tuesday, a US army commander revealed that since the beginning of the campaign against IS in August 2014, 60,000 IS extremists have been killed by the US-led anti-IS coalition forces.

General Raymond Thomas told a military news outlet that the US and its partners were on the verge of capturing the IS group’s self-claimed capitals of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

Military sources from the Iraqi air force stated that coalition airstrikes on Tuesday killed 14 IS extremists, and injured nearly 20 others in different areas of western Mosul, Iraqi local media reported on Wednesday.

The sources stated that the targeted IS extremists were from different nationalities, adding that several IS vehicles were destroyed.

The strikes, carried out Feb. 11 by an Iraqi F16, resulted in the death of 77 extremists, including 13 senior commanders, in Anbar province near the border with Syria, the Iraqi military said in a statement on Monday.

One of the airstrikes also targeted the terror group's supreme commander, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — but officials have been unable to verify if he was at the location at the time of the attack and there was conflicting information about his status.

Editing by Ava Homa