- The Washington Times - Thursday, September 4, 2014

A top military aide for the Islamic State terrorist group was killed in an airstrike in Mosul, Iraq’s defense ministry said Thursday.

Abu Hajar al-Souria was a lieutenant for Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and considered a high-level target, Business Insider reported.

Reports of his death comes just one day after it was revealed that terrorist group killed between 560 and 770 Iraqi soldiers near the city of Tikrit. Human Rights Watch said that after the Islamic State group overtook Camp Speicher north of Baghdad in June, that “horrific abuses” of a scale that “clearly rises to the crimes against humanity,” occurred, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

The United States has been launching airstrikes in Iraq since early August in an effort to assist the Iraqi government in taking back territory controlled by the Islamic State group.

The U.S. National Security Council refused to comment on reports of Abu Hajar al-Souri’s death, Business Insider reported.

• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.

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