Britain's defence chief says Islamic State will recover after air strikes

London: Britain's most senior military officer warned on Sunday that Islamic State would recover after U.S. air strikes in Iraq destroyed a convoy believed to contain some of the militant group's leaders.

A U.S. spokesman on Saturday said an air strike near the Iraqi city of Mosul destroyed 10 Islamic State (IS) vehicles after what was believed to have been a gathering of its leaders. The United States was unable to confirm whether the group's top commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been in the convoy.

Britain's Chief of the Defence Staff, Nick Houghton, said on Sunday that it may take "some days" for the United States to confirm if Baghdadi had been killed, but warned that even if he had, IS, also known as ISIS, would recover.

"I wouldn't want to rush to the sense that the potential death of one of their totemic leaders is going to create some strategic reverse within ISIS," he told the BBC.

"Because of the current potential attractiveness of this warped ideology, unless we get the political dimension of the strategy in place, then ISIS has the potential to keep regenerating and certainly regenerating its leaders."

Houghton said that the role of the international coalition conducting air strikes, which includes Britain, was to buy time for a political solution to be put in place, and to prevent IS becoming an "existential threat" to the region.

The hardline Sunni Islamic State's drive to form a caliphate has helped return sectarian violence in Iraq to the dark days of 2006-2007, the peak of its civil war.

Western and Iraqi officials say air strikes are not enough to defeat the Sunni insurgents and Iraq must improve the performance of its security forces to eliminate the threat.