Top ISIS Leader in Libya Killed by US Airstrike

Heavy smoke billows from the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, Mosul province, during an operation by Iraqi Kurdish forces backed by US-led strikes on November 12, 2015, to retake the town from the Islamic State group and cut a key supply line to Syria. SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images

The head of a Libyan Islamic State (ISIS) affiliate was killed during an airstrike on Friday, the Pentagon said. A U.S. airstrike targeted leader Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al-Zubaydi, also known asAbu Nabil, at a compound in Derna. He was “longtime al-Qaeda operative and the senior Islamic State of Iraq,” the Department of Defense said in a statement.

“Reporting suggests Nabil may have been the spokesman in ISIL’s February Coptic Christian execution video,” the news release said. ISIL is the American government’s name for ISIS. In February, a group affiliated with ISIS released a video showing dozens of Christians being executed on the beach.

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