Head of Islamic State in Afghanistan killed, says Pentagon

Afghan security force personnel patrol during an operation against Islamic State militants in Chaparhar district of the country’s Nangarhar Province on May 21, 2017.

The head of Islamic State in Afghanistan, Abu Sayed, was killed in a strike on the group’s headquarters in Kunar Province earlier this week, the Pentagon said on July 14, 2017.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement that other members of the Islamic State group were also killed in the July 11, 2017 strike.

U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters, “The significance is you kill a leader of one of these groups and it sets them back ... it is obviously a victory on our side in terms of setting them back, it is the right direction.”

Sayed is the third Islamic State leader in Afghanistan to be killed since July 2016. Former leader

Abdul Hasib was killed in a joint U.S. and Afghan operation on April 27, 2017 in the eastern Province of Nangarhar. Hasib’s predecessor Hafiz Saeed Khan died in a U.S. drone strike in 2016.

Afghan troops, backed by U.S. warplanes and special forces, have been battling militants linked to Islamic State in eastern Afghanistan for years.

The local affiliate of Islamic State, sometimes known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K) after an old name for the region that includes Afghanistan, has been active since 2015, fighting the Taliban and Afghan and U.S. forces.

General John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has vowed to defeat Islamic State there this year.