Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is seeking “absolute verification” that two of Australia’s most infamous Islamic State terrorists have been killed in Iraq.
Bishop has confirmed there have been drone strikes in Mosul, where Sydney men Khaled Sharrouf and Mohamed Elomar were believed to have been based, amid unconfirmed reports the men were killed in the Iraqi city in the past week.
She said the passports of both men had been cancelled and they were wanted by Australian police.
Bishop said the men had repeatedly boasted about their terrorist activities on social media.
“These two men are not martyrs. They are criminal thugs who have been carrying out brutal terrorist attacks, putting people’s lives in danger,” she told reporters in Sydney.
The Government is working to remove terror-related material from the internet and has provided funding for 42 community-based organisations to work on de-radicalisation and counter-extremism programs.
A terror expert says the reports about the Sydney men, if true, will be a major setback for Islamic State.
“I think it’ll be a significant blow to the Islamic State,” Australian National University academic Clarke Jones said.
The pair travelled to Syria in 2013 and have been accused of enslaving women from the Yazidi religious minority in northern Iraq.
Sharrouf’s wife, Tara Nettleton, is believed to be seeking to return to Sydney from Syria with the couple’s children, including a son photographed last year holding a severed head.
Bishop said verification of Elomar’s death by security and intelligence agencies is “probably imminent”.
But the government was still seeking to verify reports of Sharrouf’s death, she told reporters in Canberra.
“It is very difficult for us because we have an embassy in Baghdad but we don’t have one in Damascus,” she said.
“Given the security situation in Iraq it’s difficult for our authorities to gain the kind of information that would be required to verify these reports that these men have been killed.”
Bishop said the circumstances of the families of the men will be considered once reports of their death had been verified.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has previously said the family should be shown no leniency.
