Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters Friday that the U.S. believes it has killed ISIS’ second-ranked official Abdu al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli in Syria.
U.S. believes it killed ISIS’ No. 2 commander, Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli, in Syria https://t.co/QJBSseNlEEhttps://t.co/qq4nOyP6v5
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“The removal of this ISIL leader will hamper the organization’s ability to conduct operations both inside and outside of Iraq and Syria,” Carter said Friday. “This is the second ISIL leader we have successfully confirmed this month.”
Carter described al-Qaduli as ISIS’s chief finance officer and called his elimination part of the strategy to disable “ISIL’s financial infrastructure.
“We started with a storage sites where it holds its cash,” he added. “And now we’ve taken out the leader who oversees all the funding for ISIL’s operations, hurting their ability to pay fighters and hire recruits.”