US Coalition Airstrike Hits ISIS Cash Storage Facility
Pictures of Mosul, Iraq which was captured by ISIS on June 10, 2014.
According to an official speaking in anonymity to AFP two 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs struck the facility, destroying what is estimated to be “millions” of dollars in cash.
The official told AFP news agency:
“We estimate in the millions of dollars… from all their illicit stuff: oil, looting, extortion.”
The US-led coalition which is carrying out drone and plane strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been increasingly focusing on limiting the jihadists’ money-making capabilities, this has included bombing trucks that ferry illicit oil across Syria. Last year Iraq’s finance minister said the militants had looted an estimated half a billion dollars from banks in Mosul and other northern cities such as Tikrit and Baiji after it quickly moved across the Syrian border in 2014.
ISIS has been named the wealthiest terrorist group in the world and has even been targeted by an economic campaign which trying to expose the economic workings inside ISIS and related groups and to cease its campaigning through social media platforms.
Islamic State published a video on Monday claiming to show the destruction from an airstrike on a bank in its northern Iraqi stronghold. In the video it showed papers and burnt furniture littering the steel and concrete rubble of numerous buildings which appear to have been damaged by the bombing CNN, which reported the strike first, said the U.S. military believed between five and seven civilians may have been killed.
After pressure from critics who have highlighted the campaign as moving too slowly, the Pentagon has signalled it would contemplate a wider array of targets despite additional civilian deaths if the attacks prove beneficial against advances from jihadists.
The defense official added that the coalition had previously focused on cash-holding facilities one or more times in 2015 however this week’s attack was the most significant to date.
