The Mosul head of the Islamic State of the Iraq and Levant (ISIL), Yasseen Ali Suleiman Shalash, has been killed in peshmerga attacks, a news agency based in the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) has said, Anadolu agency reported.
The militant, using the nickname "Abu Abdullah", was killed in attacks by peshmerga forces supported by U.S. fighter jets in Mosul's Hasan Sham village, a statement from the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government Security Agency said on Tuesday.
Shalas was born in 1974 and joined the ranks of the Tawhid wal-Jihad group in 2003.
He fled from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad in 2013 to Syria, joining the ranks of ISIL, the statement read.
The Iraqi army, along with Kurdish peshmerga forces and armed tribesmen, is backed by U.S. airstrikes in order to dislodge ISIL-led militants who, in mid-June, conquered large parts of northwestern Iraq including Mosul, the country's second-largest city.