U.S.-led raid targets top IS figure, Pentagon employs B-52 bomber

PanARMENIAN.Net - A senior Islamic State figure in Iraq has been targeted in a U.S.-led commando raid, the Pentagon said Wednesday, April 20, as Kurdish officials claimed he had been killed, AFP reports.

The assault late Sunday, the latest raid by U.S. special operators on a mission to kill or capture IS leaders, occurred at an undisclosed location in northern Iraq and targeted Suleiman Abd Shabib al-Jabouri, Baghdad-based U.S. military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said.

He worked as "one of ISIL's military emirs and an ISIL war council member," Warren told Pentagon reporters in a phone call, using an acronym for the IS group.

"Al-Jabouri's removal will degrade ISIL's leadership network and impact their ability to coordinate attacks and defend ISIL strongholds," he added, according to AFP.

Warren declined to comment on whether Jabouri was killed, but in a statement to AFP on Wednesday the Kurdish regional security council said he died.

"Al-Jabouri, also known as Abu Saif, was a member ISIL's military council, supervising the group's activities in South Mosul and Makhmour. In the joint operation, two of his aides were also killed," the statement read.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force for the first time deployed a B-52 bomber against the Islamic State, the Pentagon said Wednesday as it ramps up a 20-month campaign to smash the jihadists.

The bombing mission, in which a hulking B-52 destroyed a weapons storage facility south of Mosul, comes the same week that Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited Baghdad and announced extra US troops, cash and equipment for the anti-IS campaign in Iraq.