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The Islamic State Has a Minister of Finance — and the US Just Said That It Killed Him

Not much is known about Abu Salah, whose real name is Muafaq Mustafa Mohammed al-Karmoush, but the US Army called him "one of the most senior and experienced members" of the terror insurgency.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons

US officials announced on Thursday that the Islamic State's finance minister and two other senior leaders — including the top militant in charge of extortion — were killed in a recent airstrike.

Army Colonel Steve Warren revealed to reporters that a coalition strikes killed Abu Salah, who he identified as the terror insurgency's finance minister, along with the other senior leaders sometime in the last few weeks. He declined to elaborate further on the nature of the operation or precisely when it took place.

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"Their removal will degrade ISIL's ability to command and control troops, and it disrupts their ability to finance their efforts," Warren said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State (IS), which is also known as ISIS and by its Arabic acronym Daesh.

Not much is known about Abu Salah, whose real name is Muafaq Mustafa Mohammed al-Karmoush, but his name was discovered on a leadership chart by Iraqi special forces during a raid in the summer of 2014. Warren characterized him as "one of the most senior and experienced members" of IS, and noted that he had previously been a senior member of al Qaeda, of which IS is an offshoot. Al Qaeda disavowed its association with the group in 2014 over an internal dispute.

In September, the US Department of Treasury added his name to the list of IS leaders who are under financial sanction by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Treasury did not respond to request for comment from VICE News about what prompted his addition to the list more than a year after the discovery of his name.

Since IS launched a brazen attack on Paris in November, the US and its allies have targeted the group's oil interests with airstrikes as a way of cutting off its funding. The US-led military coalition have stepped up attacks on oil trucks and infrastructure, destroying hundreds of trucks and bombing numerous wellheads over recent weeks.

The killing of Abu Salah and the other two leaders is just the most recent successful attack on promiment IS members. On Monday, the US confirmed that it had killed the group's top commander in Libya. In November, coalition airstrikes killed Mohammed Emwazi, a British citizen known as "Jihadi John" who had figured prominently in a series of IS propaganda videos in which hostages were executed.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons