Islamic State group leader killed in US strike in Iraq

Baghdad: U.S. Central Command forces announced that they conducted an airstrike in Iraq, in coordination with Iraqi Intelligence, which resulted in the death of the Global ISIS #2 leader Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufayi, also known as “Abu Khadijah”.

Although Iraq had proclaimed in 2017 the defeat of the jihadist group on its territory, IS cells have remained active and carry out sporadic attacks against Iraq’s army and police.

Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufayi “was considered one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world”, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said on social media platform X.

The jihadist, sanctioned by the United States in 2023, was IS’s so-called governor of the group’s Syrian and Iraqi provinces, according to the Iraqi premier.

Rufayi was also “responsible for the foreign operations offices”, Sudani said.

He did not say when Rufayi was killed but applauded the operation by Iraqi intelligence that was carried out in cooperation with the US-led anti-jihadist coalition in Iraq.

“Today the fugitive leader of ISIS in Iraq was killed,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“He was relentlessly hunted down by our intrepid warfighters. His miserable life was terminated, along with another member of ISIS, in coordination with the Iraqi Government and the Kurdish Regional Government.”

The US Central Command posted on X what appeared to be a video of the strike, which it said “killed the Global ISIS #2 leader… and one other ISIS operative.”

It said that both fighters had been wearing unexploded “suicide vests” and that it had identified Rufayi through a DNA match.

– Lingering presence –

Last October, Baghdad said Iraqi forces had killed nine IS group commanders. They included the so-called governor of Iraq for IS, Jassim al-Mazrouei Abu Abdel Qader, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said at the time.

IS in 2014 declared a “caliphate” after capturing large parts of Iraq and Syria, beginning a rule marked by atrocities.

Iraqi forces backed by the international coalition defeated IS in late 2017. The group lost its last territory in Syria two years later.

The group has, however, maintained a presence in Syria’s vast desert, and in Iraq largely carries out attacks in rural areas.

About 2,500 American troops are deployed in Iraq, which now considers its security forces capable of confronting the jihadists.

The US and Iraq announced in late September that the international coalition would end its decade-long military mission in federal Iraq within a year, and by September 2026 in the autonomous Kurdistan region.