The U.S. military says it killed the top Islamic State commander in Fallujah earlier this week, as it continues airstrikes in support of an Iraqi offensive to retake the city.
But spokesman Col. Steve Warren, briefing via teleconference from Baghdad, said the removal of Maher al-Bilawi from the battlefield would likely have little overall effect on the pace of the operation.
“This, of course, won’t completely cause the enemy to stop fighting, but it’s a blow,” Warren said. “It creates confusion and it causes the second-in-command to have to move up.”
Warren said the strike was the result of intelligence that pinpointed the location of his headquarters in Fallujah, not because he was on any target list. “This cat wasn’t part of the high-value individual list,” Warren said. “This is some intelligence we developed locally. We worked it very rapidly. And we took an effective strike and scored one for the good guys.”
With Iraqi forces still about 10 miles from the city center, it remains uncertain whether Islamic State forces will dig in and fight in Fallujah or flee once it’s clear they are facing superior numbers and firepower.
Warren said after Islamic State fighters dropped weapons and ran in the face of Iraqi offensives in Hiit and Rutbah earlier this year, their leaders dealt out cruel punishment to fighters who fled.
“We saw local newspaper reports that some of the fighters who fled Rutbah were arrested by their leadership and then executed by being placed in bakery ovens and cooked to death,” Warren said.
