Who Was Abu Saad Erhabi? ISIS Afghanistan Chief Killed In Airstrike

The head of Islamic State in Afghanistan, Abu Saad Erhabi, was killed along with 10 others in airstrikes on the group's hideouts in Nangarhar province Saturday night, officials said.

The National Directorate of Security in Kabul said in a statement that the members of the militant group were killed in a joint ground and air operation by Afghan and foreign forces. A large number of ammunition and weapons were also destroyed during the raids at the hideouts.

ISIS has not announced the death of its leader yet, however, the U.S. forces in Afghanistan confirmed the airstrikes targeted “a senior leader of a designated terrorist organization."

Abu Saad Erhabi, which translates as “father of Saad the terrorist," is the fourth leader of the militant group to be killed in the last 18 months. He is the emir of the Islamic State’s branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Khorasan province.

He is believed to have led about 2,000 fighters in Afghanistan under an affiliate group known as “Islamic State Khorasan," The Times reported.

According to the country’s intelligence agency, he was also called Abu Saad Orakzai, a reference to the Pakistani Orakzai tribal agency from where most of the group’s top leaders originate.

­Erhabi’s predecessor, Abdul Hasib, was killed in a raid 16 months ago. His replacement Abu Sayed was also killed in an airstrike in the eastern province of Nangarhar in June last year. ­Abdul Rahman, who was believed to have been selected as his successor, was killed two months later.

A few hours before the airstrike on Saturday, the group claimed a deadly suicide attack outside an election commission office in the city of Jalalabad, killing two people.

The group's other attacks in the recent weeks include the bombing at a school in a Shiite area of Kabul that killed at least 37 people and a number of attacks on several government installations in the capital. Earlier this month, more than 150 ISIS fighters surrendered to Afghan government forces in the face of an onslaught by the Taliban in the country's northern Jawzjan province.

"These people were surrounded by the Taliban for several days, but last night they managed to break free and surrender to government forces,” Jawzjan Police Chief Mohammad Jawzjan said at the time. "This was Daesh's last center in the north of Afghanistan. Now we can say that Daesh is cleared from the north."

Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, said: "We also note that the Taliban is fighting ISIS, and we encourage that because ISIS needs to be destroyed.”

In an attempt to suppress all the various militant groups, U.S. announced it would send 3,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2017. With this move, the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan reached 14,000.