WASHINGTON — A U.S. airstrike is believed to have killed the leader of the Islamic State affiliate in Libya, Pentagon officials said Saturday, in an attack that did not appear to be related to the terror attacks claimed by the group in Paris.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the strike took place on Friday and targeted Wisam al Zubaidi, also known as Abu Nabil al-Anbari, who commands what is the Islamic State’s strongest branch outside of Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The former Iraqi police officer was dispatched to Libya in 2014 by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to build up the group’s affiliate there.
Prior to going to Libya, Zubaidi was a senior Islamic State operative in Iraq. Like Baghdadi, he spent time in a U.S. prison in Iraq following the 2003 American invasion.
In a statement, Cook said that Zubaidi may have been the spokesman in a gruesome video that showed the killing of 21 Egyptian Christians on a beach in Libya earlier this year.
Defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the operation, said the attack involved two American F-15 aircraft that struck a small compound outside of Derna, a militant stronghold in eastern Libya. Several other people were in the same building at the time of the strike, officials said.
While officials are still assessing results of the operation, the strike was believed to have killed Zubaidi. Officials said the attack had been planned for some time and was not linked to Friday night’s violence in Paris
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Friday’s airstrike marked the first time that the United States has struck what American officials believe is an authentic Islamic State operation outside of Iraq and Syria.
While militants in places like Afghanistan and Nigeria have affiliated themselves with or declared allegiance to the group, U.S. officials believe those groups are not under the direct command and control of its core operation in Iraq and Syria.
In Libya, the presence of Zubaidi, who headed Islamic State operations in central Iraq prior to going to Libya, signals a different level of connection, officials said. Since earlier this year, Islamic State militants have consolidated their control of Sirte, a coastal city in Libya now under the group’s harsh form of extremist rule.
Intelligence officials say the Islamic State, also known as ISIL, is a hybrid operation in Libya, led partly by foreign fighters and partly by Libyans with extremist sympathies or who feel disenfranchised in the years following the 2011 revolution that ousted Moammar Khadafy.
Senior militants in Libya appear to have drawn from the experience the group has acquired during its growth across Iraq and Syria, using many of the same propaganda and enforcement measures to attract followers and discipline the local population.
