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ISIS Information Minister 'Dr. Wa'il,' Killed in Airstrike in Syria: Pentagon

Wa'il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad's death is the latest in a series of successful attacks on senior ISIS leadership, specifically the group’s “original leadership."
Image: Militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province
A militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province June 30, 2014. The fighters held the parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic "caliphate" after the group captured territory in neighbouring Iraq, a monitoring service said. The Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot previously known as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), posted pictures online on Sunday of people waving black flags from cars and holding guns in the air, the SITE monitoring service said. Reuters
By Jim Miklaszewski and Elisha Fieldstadt

The ISIS leader responsible for producing the militant group's often gruesome propaganda videos was killed in an airstrike earlier this month, the Pentagon announced Friday.

Wa'il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, also known as "Dr. Wa'il," was targeted and killed by coalition forces near Raqqah, Syria, on Sept. 7, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement.

Cook said Wa'il was one of ISIS's "most senior leaders" as a "prominent member" of the terror group's leadership council.

Related: ISIS Says No. 2 Leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani Is Dead in Syria

Wa'il was ISIS' official minister of information and "oversaw (ISIS's) production of terrorist propaganda videos showing torture and executions," the statement said.

The Pentagon also said Wa'il had been a close associate of Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, ISIS' second-in-command, who was killed in an airstrike on Aug. 30.

ISIS has not confirmed the death of Wa'il, according to global security firm and NBC News analyst Flashpoint Intelligence, which added that he was the mastermind behind featuring beheadings and executions in the group's propaganda films.

Wa'il's death is the latest in a series of successful attacks on senior ISIS leadership, specifically the group’s “original leadership," a senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News. Along with Al-Adnani, two military officials were killed by U.S. drone strikes — the ISIS deputy minister of war, Basim Muhammad Ahmad Sultan al-Bajari, and a senior commander in Mosul, Iraq, Hatim Talib al-Hamduni.

Jim Miklaszewski

Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.

In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.

Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the "tanker wars" in the Persian Gulf.

Elisha Fieldstadt

Elisha Fieldstadt is a breaking news editor for NBC News.

Robert Windrem contributed.