(CNN)The U.S. is trying to verify that airstrikes recently killed two top terrorist operatives, including a high-ranking ISIS commander, CNN has learned.
U.S. warplanes targeted senior ISIS operative Omar al-Shishani in Iraq in the last few days, some four months after the coalition first thought it had killed him in Syria, according to two U.S. officials. The U.S. is still trying to confirm they got him this time, the U.S. officials said.
Al-Shishani, also known as "Omar the Chechen," was targeted by an airstrike near Qarayyah, Iraq, south of Mosul, the officials said. But they would not speak publicly until it's certain this time that he is dead. If he has been killed in Iraq, it's a sign that top ISIS operatives are still able to move around the region with some degree of freedom.
In March, the U.S. had thought it killed al-Shishani in Syria when he traveled there to visit ISIS fighters.
But then ISIS posted a message saying he had been injured but survived, and U.S. officials privately acknowledged they might have erred in claiming he was dead, although some continued to say the U.S. airstrike had killed him, with some officials saying he might have died several days later of his wounds.
Al-Shishani had long been considered one of ISIS's most capable military commanders. With a $5 million reward on his head, he once served in an elite Georgian military unit before joining ISIS in 2013. He is also thought to have been involved in running a prison in Raqqa, Syria, where foreign hostages were held.
In a separate strike that some U.S. officials said involved an American drone, it's believed a top commander in the Pakistani Taliban, known as the TTP, was killed in eastern Afghanistan. U.S. officials are trying to confirm the killing of Khalifa Umar Mansoor, a senior commander of the banned TTP.
Mansoor is believed by U.S. and Pakistani officials to be behind the devastating attack on an Army public school in Peshawar in 2014 that left at scores dead, mostly schoolchildren.
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