U.S. airstrikes target Islamic State leaders in Iraq, destroy convoy

The U.S. carried out airstrikes that targeted a gathering of Islamic State leaders in northern Iraq, military officials said Saturday.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, confirmed that warplanes destroyed a 10-vehicle convoy traveling near Mosul late Friday.

Col. Patrick Ryder, a Central Command spokesman, could not immediately confirm whether the leader of the Sunni Muslim extremist group, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, was among those in the convoy.

“This strike demonstrates the pressure we continue to place on the ISIL terrorist network and the group’s increasingly limited freedom to maneuver, communicate and command,” he said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

News of the strikes came a day after the Pentagon announced it would send up to 1,500 additional troops to Iraq, an escalation that more than doubles the size of the U.S. force assisting Iraqi national and Kurdish troops battling Islamic State militants.

If the U.S. military killed Baghdadi, it would mark a significant blow to the group, which has seized wide swaths of land in Iraq and Syria. He is regarded as one of the most powerful militants in the world, a former Islamist preacher now threatening to rewrite the map of the Middle East.

Baghdadi is believed to have served time in the U.S.-run prison at Camp Bucca during the Iraq war, and it was there, militant sources say, that he joined a nascent Al Qaeda-inspired group known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, founded by Abu Musab Zarqawi, who was killed in a 2006 U.S. airstrike. Zarqawi led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings against Iraqi Shiite Muslims and Americans.

Baghdadi was declared leader of Islamic State in 2010 after his predecessor was killed. A year later, the U.S. State Department announced a $10-million reward for information leading to his capture or death.

Separately, U.S. military forces conducted two airstrikes near Qaim and destroyed an Islamic State armored vehicle and two checkpoints, U.S. officials said.

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