US Airstrike Eliminates Australia's Most Wanted Daesh Militant

Australia's most wanted Daesh operative and recruiter, Neil Prakash, has been killed in a US airstrike in Iraq, according to a statement released by the country's Department of Defence Ministers on Thursday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Prakash was killed on Friday near Iraq's Daesh-held city of Mosul.

“Neil Prakash was a prominent ISIL [Daesh] member and a senior terrorist recruiter and attack facilitator. Prakash has been linked to several Australia-based attack plans and calls for lone-wolf attacks against the United States…. His death disrupts and degrades ISIL’s ability to recruit vulnerable people in our community to conduct terrorist acts,” Australia's attorney general and defense minister said in the statement.

The militant, who was the child of Cambodian migrants, converted to Islam in 2012 and traveled to Syria in 2013.

Daesh, which is an extremist jihadist group outlawed in many countries, including the United States and Russia, overran large areas of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and declared a caliphate. The group has gained much notoriety for conducting suicide bombings and other attacks worldwide as well as for recruiting young people via social media.