Iraq's Defence Ministry on Wednesday said an airstrike by the US-led coalition killed a senior Islamic State commander and others near the extremist-held city of Mosul. While the coalition said it conducted an airstrike there in the last 24 hours, American officials could not be immediately reached about the statement from Iraq, which has made incorrect claims before.
A Ministry statement said the strike killed Abu Alaa al-Afari and others who were in a meeting inside a mosque in the city of Tal Afar. It described al-Afari as senior deputy to the Islamic State group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. It did not offer a time for the strike, nor any specific casualty figures. It did offer a black-and-white video clip of an airstrike hitting a building.
A Defence Ministry official later told ap that the airstrike happened on Tuesday. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to journalists. American officials could not be immediately reached regarding the strike. The US-led coalition said on Wednesday it carried out a strike in the past day near Tal Afar, destroying "an ISIl fighting position and an ISIl heavy machine gun," using a different acronym for the group. The US State Department's Rewards for Justice program lists Abu Alaa as one of the aliases for a wanted IS group senior leader named Abd Al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli.