US State Department Designates Two Daesh Leaders as Global Terrorists

The US State Department has moved to designate two Daesh leaders as terrorists, which means all the American citizens will be prohibited from conducting transactions with the two individuals.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Ahmad Alkhald and Abu Yahya al-Iraqi, the members of the violent extremist group that operates mostly in Iraq and Syria, have been designated as global terrorists, the US Department of State said in a press release on Thursday.

The release said that Alkhald is the bomb maker for the terrorist cell behind the terror attacks in Paris in November of 2015 and Brussels in March of 2016.

Al-Iraqi is a senior leader who reported directly to the terror group’s head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and is responsible for Baghdadi's security and Daesh security in Iraq and Syria.

The sanctions prohibit all US citizens from conducting transactions with the two individuals, whose property is now blocked.

Daesh is a Salafi jihadist militant group that emerged in the Middle East in 2014. With its stated aim of establishing a Muslim caliphate that would span across the entire region, the group has committed war atrocities, including the massacre of Yazidis, an ethno-religious group in Iraq.