Pentagon: ISIS leader in Libya likely killed in U.S. strike
WASHINGTON -- An American airstrike has targeted and likely killed a top leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in Libya, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement the strike targeted Abu Nabil.
The statement said that Nabil, who also goes by Wissam Najm Abd and Zayd al Zubaydi, is an Iraqi national and the senior ISIS leader in Libya.
He also may have been the spokesman in the Coptic Christian execution video from February of 2015, the statement said.
A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press that the F-15 fighter jet made the strike after the Paris terror attacks were underway, and the statement said "the operation was authorized and initiated prior to the terrorist attack," which killed at least 129 people.
The U.S. claim comes one day after U.S. officials said a drone strike in the Syrian city of Raqqa likely killed the ISIS militant known as "Jihadi John," who participated in the beheading videos of two American journalists and the slayings of several other captives, according to the Pentagon.
Cook said that the strike in Libya should demonstrate that the U.S. will go after ISIS wherever they operate.