ISIS on Thursday said a coalition airstrike on July 10 killed a leader the Pentagon had said was killed in a March strike. The leader, so called “minister of war” Abu Umar al-Shishani, was first reportedly killed in a March airstrike in Syria, the Pentagon announced at the time. Defense spokesman Peter Cook said on Thursday, intelligence at the time “led us to believe he had been killed” but that picture was “incomplete” and it now appears he survived the first strike. The US-led coalition on July 10 hit a meeting of ISIS leadership in Mosul, Iraq, and the ISIS-affiliated Amaq news agency said al-Shishani was killed, according to the BBC. Al-Shishani, whose real name is Tarkhan Matirashvili, is a Chechen and was an adviser to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Cook said the Pentagon could not yet confirm he was killed in the most recent strike.
An important U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.