The U.S. Department of Defense has announced that a coalition airstrike has killed a senior finance officer of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS).  The announcement was made by Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren in a video call from Baghdad, Iraq.  

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Warren said Muwaffaq Mustafa Mohammed al-Karmush, also known as Abu Salah, was killed in an air raid conducted by coalition warplanes in late November, The Times of India reports. 

The U.S. Department of Treasury's list of Counter Terrorism Designations says the ISIS finance chief was an Iraqi citizen.  He was born in 1973.

The U.S. military sees the killing of Abu Salah as a decisive blow against the ISIS financial network.

"Killing him and his predecessors exhausts the knowledge and talent needed to coordinate funding within the organization," said Warren.

ISIS finances its operations from money-making activities in territories over which it has control. The group has reportedly raised as much as $500 million from selling oil in the black market.  ISIS militants are also said to loot bank vaults and run various extortion operations both in Syria and Iraq.      

Brett McGurk, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL,  confirmed Warren's announcement in a recent tweet, saying that two of Abu Salah's top lieutenants were also killed in the airstrike.  

The two others have been identified as Mounir Ben Dhaou Ben Brahim Ben Helal, also known as Abu Mariam, and Abu Waqman al-Tunis.  Abu Mariam is said to be an enforcer and senior leader in the ISIS extortion networks.  Abu Waqman al-Tunis oversaw the transfer of people, funds and weapons for the group. 

McGurk said the airstrike that killed the three men is part of an on-going "campaign to destroy ISIL's financial infrastructure."

The U.S. said last month that it was sending a special operations unit to Iraq from where it could slip into Syria to kill or capture ISIS leaders.  Coalition special forces units like the secretive British Special Air Service (SAS) and the US Army's Delta Force are sometimes called on to go behind enemy lines in order to mark targets for airstrikes.

"We want this expeditionary targeting force to make ISIL and its leaders wonder when they go to bed at night, who's going to be coming in the window," US defense secretary Ashton Carter told a Senate hearing last Wednesday.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against ISIS since September 2014. 

TagsUS, US airstrike, Abu Salah, ISIS, ISIS funding, ISIS chief, anti-ISIS coalition, anti-ISIL campaign, us special forces