The ISIS leader responsible
for producing the militant group's often gruesome propaganda videos was killed
in an airstrike earlier this month, the Pentagon announced Friday.
Wa'il Adil Hasan Salman
al-Fayad, also known as "Dr. Wa'il," was targeted and killed by
coalition forces near Raqqah, Syria, on Sept. 7, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook
said in a statement.
Cook said Wa'il was one of
ISIS's "most senior leaders" as a "prominent member" of the
terror group's leadership council.
Wa'il was ISIS' official
minister of information and "oversaw (ISIS's) production of terrorist
propaganda videos showing torture and executions," the statement said.
The Pentagon also said
Wa'il had been a close associate of Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, ISIS'
second-in-command, who was killed in an airstrike on Aug. 30.
ISIS has not confirmed the
death of Wa'il, according to global security firm and NBC News analyst
Flashpoint Intelligence, which added that he was the mastermind behind
featuring beheadings and executions in the group's propaganda films.
Wa'il's death is the latest
in a series of successful attacks on senior ISIS leadership, specifically the
group's "original leadership," a senior U.S. intelligence official
told NBC News. Along with Al-Adnani, two military officials were killed by U.S.
drone strikes — the ISIS deputy minister of war, Basim Muhammad Ahmad Sultan
al-Bajari, and a senior commander in Mosul, Iraq, Hatim Talib al-Hamduni.
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