ISIS leaders obliterated in US air strikes as West pummels terror group

His death comes as a new report concludes ISIS facesfinancial ruin after being battered by airstrikes targeting the terror group's economic infrastructure.

It comes after the coalition has been carrying out a year of air raids on IS militants in Iraq and Syria.

But it was revealed that one leader was recently was also killed in Libya – confirming growing fears that ISIS, also known as Daesh, is active in the North African country.

Abu Nabil died after an F-15 jet targeted a compound in the eastern city of Derna on 13 November, it said.

Army Colonel Steve Warren told a Pentagon briefing coalition strikes had killed Abu Salah, Islamic State's financial minister, in late November.

"He was one of the most senior and experienced members of ISIL's financial network and he was a legacy Al Qaeda member," Warren said.

Warren said Salah was the third member of the finance network who had been killed in as many months.

"Killing him and his predecessors exhausts the knowledge and talent needed to coordinate funding within the organization," Warren added.

"You work the body in (the) early rounds and maybe you won't get a knockout from those early round body shots, but several rounds later you'll see your... opponents knees begin to get weak ... and now he's beginning to get set up for the knockout.

According to a Brooking Institute report, Abu Salah's real name is Muafaq Mustafa Mohammed al- Karmoush.

It rakes in huge amounts through oil sales, extortion and sales of antiquities, said Thomas Sanderson, an expert on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Recently, U.S. defence officials estimated that Islamic State was earning about £24 million per month from oil sales before October.

Then the Pentagon started an operation known as "Tidal Wave II" targeting Islamic State's oil revenue.

The UK then began oil facilities hours after Prime Minister David Cameron won a Commons vote which allowed the UK to bomb ISIS in Syria. 

(dailystar.co.uk)