One of the Islamic State’s top leaders in Iraq’s Anbar province was killed in a U.S. airstrike last week, the Pentagon said Monday.
(WashingtonPost)- Abu Wahib, the “military emir” of Anbar, and three other Islamic State members were killed May 6 while traveling in a vehicle near the town of Rutbah in western Iraq, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.
“ISIL leadership has been hit hard by coalition efforts and this is another example of that,” Cook told reporters, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “It is dangerous to be an ISIL leader in Iraq and Syria these days and for good reason.”
Wahib was a legacy member of the Islamic State. He started out with the group’s earlier iteration, al-Qaeda in Iraq, before being detained by U.S. forces in the mid-2000s. He was transferred to an Iraqi prison after the U.S. withdrawal in 2011 and was broken out shortly after.
His death, like many other Islamic State leaders, has been falsely reported before. Earlier this year, for instance, Wahib was believed to have been killed in an airstrike near the town of Hit during pitched fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State fighters there.