Some mid to high level commanders were killed without Isis releasing any "grand press releases", he added, which could indicate that their deaths were the result of an internal feud.
Several high level commanders have defected from the group.
Last year there were more than 100 drone strikes, with the vast majority of those attacks killing only low-level militants -- not high level commanders.
Again and again, high-level commanders ordered Lincolns into attacks that officers in the field warned would be suicidal.
Jens Meierhenrich, a Rwanda-watcher at the London School of Economics, says that even if high-level commanders did not tell men to rape, they gave tacit approval.
They kidnapped high-level commanders from other rebel groups, and murdered Syrian civilians who had been involved in the earliest mass protests against Assad, calculating that these were the only people brave enough to confront Isis in the future.
Launch on warning (LOW), military strategy that allows high-level commanders to launch a retaliatory nuclear-weapons strike against an opponent as soon as satellites and other warning sensors detect an incoming enemy missile.
I can shoot all of these 30 bullets into your chest right now, and there is no one who can stop us.' " The most serious abuses described involved armed robbery, abduction, rape and assaults on civilians, often committed by members of the police, military and intelligence services with the knowledge of high-level commanders, the report said.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban's supreme leader has replaced his top deputy with a relatively young but hardened fighter, an indication of the Taliban's determination to push ahead with its insurgency despite the recent arrests of a handful of high-level commanders in Pakistan, according to Afghans and Pakistanis close to the Taliban.
If they can demonstrate that high-level commanders controlled detention centers where torture was widely used, for example, then they've made a case.
WASHINGTON — A C.I.A. drone strike on Thursday killed a high-level commander in the Haqqani network, the militant group that has been the largest killer of American troops in Afghanistan, American officials said.
