US News

US airstrike takes out three of ISIS’ highest-ranking cohorts

A pinpoint US airstrike took out three of ISIS’ highest-ranking henchmen Thursday, including the top aide to the jihadis’ fanatical leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to a new report.

The strike on the ISIS-controlled Iraqi stronghold of Mosul killed Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, a key adviser to al-Baghdadi, the one-time street thug and preacher who now commands the bloodthirsty militants, a senior Iraqi military official told NBC News.

The strike — the latest US air attack on the al Qaeda-inspired radicals — also killed a bomb expert and the military commander of the nearby town of Tel Afar, the source told the network.

The Middle East Web site Al Arabiya cited the Iraqi Defense Ministry in confirming that Baghdadi’s aide had been killed.

Iraq and the United States have both been pounding ISIS targets from the air after the militant group seized large parts of the country’s north and west.

The strikes come as the US and its NATO allies have struck a more aggressive stance against the Sunni fighters.

Baghdadi was a key figure in the Sunni extremist response to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has appointed himself the caliph of an Islamic state — a swath of Iraq and Syria as large as Great Britain.