US: Airstrikes killed 18 ISIS leaders last month

A U.S.-led coalition has killed 18 ISIS leaders in the last 30 days, 13 of them in Mosul, Iraq, according to a U.S. military spokesman on Thursday.  

That includes military commanders, propagandists and those facilitating the recruitment of foreign fighters into the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, spokesman Air Force Col. John Dorrian said, according to Reuters. 

{mosads}”By taking these individuals off the battlefield, it creates some really disruptive effects to enemy command and control,” Dorrian added. 

The announcement comes as U.S. forces prepare to back the Iraqi government’s push to retake Mosul from ISIS next month. 

The Pentagon on Wednesday announced it will send 615 more U.S. troops to Iraq in the coming weeks to support Iraqi forces conducting the fight. 

Dorrian said between 3,000 and 4,500 ISIS fighters are estimated to be left in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and a stronghold for the terror group. 

A defense official told The Hill on Wednesday that eliminating ISIS’s top ranks is reducing ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s influence and isolating him.

“He only really talks to a couple of people — very trusted people, and we’ve killed many of them. He has a smaller and smaller group of people he can even interact with so it makes him relevant, it makes him less able to be really in charge,” the official said. 

“It’s very similar to Osama bin Laden. [He] couldn’t talk to anybody,” the official added.