Peshmerga forces kill senior Islamic State commander

ERBIL, Iraq, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- Kurdish Peshmerga forces killed senior Islamic State commander Yasin Ali Suleiman Shlash on Tuesday.

Shlash, also known by the aliases Abu Abdullah and Abu Sumaya, was a senior IS commander in Mosul responsible for the terror group's operations in Ninewah Province, including the abduction in August of Yezidi women in Sinjar.

"He was killed with a number of other terrorists during a military operation by Peshmerga forces in coordination with the U.S. Air Force to liberate Hassan Sham and its vicinities," the Kurdistan National Security Council said in a statement published on the Kurdish Rudaw news site.

The specific circumstances of his death and the identities of the other terrorists killed in the joint operation are unclear.

The 39-year-old IS Mosul commander reportedly had close ties with former al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and "was the mastermind behind the 2007 explosion in front of the Ministry of the Interior in Erbil."

"In 2010 he was arrested by the American forces and later transferred to the jurisdiction of the Iraqi government, where he was set free during the infamous Abu Ghraib jailbreak in 2013 and fled to Syria where he joined the Islamic State group," the National Security Council reported.