Washington: Pentagon has disclosed that two top ISIL leaders were killed in a US airstrike in the Iraqi city of Mosul on June 25.
Making the announcement, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook hoped that this would help in liberating Mosul from the control of the dreaded terror group.
"Coalition forces conducted an airstrike against two ISIL senior military commanders on June 25 near Mosul, resulting in their deaths," he said on Friday.
"The precision strike killed Basim Muhammad Ahmad Sultan al-Bajari, ISIL's deputy minister of war, and Hatim Talib al-Hamduni, an ISIL military commander in Mosul," Cook said.
These deaths are the latest in coalition efforts to systemically eliminate ISIL's cabinet wherever they hide, disrupting their ability to plot external terror attacks and hold onto the territory they use to claim legitimacy, he said in a statement.
Cook said the international coalition fighting ISIL, working with local, capable, and motivated forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria, continues to make sustained progress in our campaign to deal ISIL a lasting defeat.
"In recent days, the coalition has freed Fallujah from ISIL's grip; launched devastating strikes against ISIL forces fleeing that city; completed the encirclement of Manbij, a key node in the flow of foreign fighters between Syria and Turkey; and started to clear key terrain south of Mosul of ISIL forces," he added.
"In addition to making operationally significant strides in our campaign to defeat ISIL, we continue to look for - and seize - every opportunity to hasten it," Cook said.
Al-Bajari was an experienced terrorist, a former member of al-Qaeda who brought his military skills into ISIL's terrorist network.
