ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—A senior Islamic State leader in Anbar province has been killed in a US airstrike, the Pentagon stated. “On May 6, a coalition air strike targeted Abu Wahib, ISIL’s military emir for Anbar province and a former member of al-Qaeda in Iraq who has appeared in ISIL execution videos,” said Peter Cook, Pentagon press secretary, using an alternative acronym for ISIS. Three other jihadists who were traveling with Wahib were also killed in the airstrike but their names were not given. They were hit near Rutba, in western Iraq. “ISIL leadership has been hit hard by coalition efforts and this is another example of that,” Cook added. “It is dangerous to be an ISIL leader in Iraq and Syria these days and for good reason.” Wahib, also known as Shaker Wahib, was arrested by US forces in 2006 for suspected ties with al-Qaeda and sentenced to death but escaped from prison in Tikrit in September 2012. It is believed Wahib was in Camp Bucca detention centre around the same time that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Bahdadi was also there. He was commander of the al-Anbar Lions militia who had control of large areas of central Iraq. He is believed to feature in a video of three truck drivers accused of being Shia and executed on the side of the road. Last year, the anti-ISIS activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently mocked Wahib on social media, sharing pictures of him in brown fatigues next to pictures of a doner kebab, which the group said he resembled.
