U.S. kills Islamic State's No. 2 in airstrike

The No. 2 commander of the Islamic State was killed in a U.S. airstrike earlier this week in Iraq, the Obama administration announced Friday.

The death of Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, also known as Hajji Mutazz, is a significant blow to the terrorist network, also called ISIS or ISIL, but the group is known to have a fairly well-organized bureaucracy and it will likely quickly replace him.


There was some confusion, however, because a militant identified as Hajji Mutazz was reported killed in late 2014. But it’s not unusual for those killed in airstrikes to be misidentified or to have similar names.

According to a White House statement, al-Hayali was the senior deputy to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and was in charge of the group’s operations in Iraq. He had been a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor to ISIL.

He died on Aug. 18 when his vehicle was hit near the Iraqi city of Mosul, which he helped conquer in June 2014. Also killed in the strike was an ISIL media operative known as Abu Abdullah, the White House statement said.

Al-Hayali “was a primary coordinator for moving large amounts of weapons, explosives, vehicles, and people between Iraq and Syria,” said National Security Council spokesman Ned Price. His “death will adversely impact ISIL’s operations given that his influence spanned ISIL’s finance, media, operations, and logistics.”

The U.S., working with dozens of other countries as well as Kurdish and Iraqi fighters, has sought to roll back ISIL’s territorial gains in both Iraq and Syria.

Although the U.S. has sent thousands of military advisers and trainers to Iraq, the Obama administration has been unwilling to commit combat troops to the operation.

Republicans have said the U.S. needs to do more to stop the terrorist group, and the issue of whether to send ground troops to the region has already become a point of debate in the 2016 presidential campaign.