The Iraqi Prime Minister mentioned that personnel of the nation’s nationwide intelligence service, working with coalition forces commanded by the USA, had killed the pinnacle of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as reported by CNN citing AP.
“The Iraqis proceed their spectacular victories over the forces of darkness and terrorism,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani mentioned in a press release posted on X.
Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai, or “Abu Khadija,” was “deputy caliph” of the militant group and “some of the harmful terrorists in Iraq and the world,” the assertion mentioned, as reported by CNN.
On his Reality Social platform Friday evening, US President Donald Trump mentioned, “In the present day the fugitive chief of ISIS in Iraq was killed. He was relentlessly hunted down by our intrepid warfighters” in coordination with the Iraqi authorities and the Kurdish regional authorities.
“PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!” Trump added.
As per a report by CNN, a safety official mentioned the operation was executed by airstrike within the western Iraqi province of Anbar. In response to a second official, al-Rifai’s demise was verified on Friday, however the operation occurred Thursday evening. They weren’t permitted to make public feedback, in order that they talked on the situation of anonymity.
The announcement got here on the identical day as the primary go to by Syria’s high diplomat to Iraq, throughout which the 2 nations pledged to work collectively to fight IS.
Iraqi International Minister Fouad Hussein, in keeping with the report, mentioned at a information convention that “there are widespread challenges going through Syrian and Iraqi society, and particularly the terrorists of IS.” He mentioned the officers had spoken “intimately in regards to the actions of ISIS, whether or not on the Syrian-Iraqi border, inside Syria or inside Iraq” through the go to.
Hussein additional referred to an operations room fashioned by Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon at a latest assembly in Amman to confront IS and mentioned it will quickly start work.
The connection between Iraq and Syria is considerably fraught after the autumn of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Al-Sudani got here to energy with the assist of a coalition of Iran-backed factions, and Tehran was a serious backer of Assad.
The present interim president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was earlier reportedly often called Abu Mohammed al-Golani and fought as an al-Qaida militant in Iraq after the US invasion of 2003 and later fought towards Assad’s authorities in Syria.
The US and Iraq introduced an settlement final yr to wind down the army mission in Iraq of an American-led coalition preventing the Islamic State group by September 2025, with US forces departing some bases the place they’ve stationed troops throughout a two-decade-long army presence within the nation.
Iraqi political officers declared that the menace posed by IS was below management and that they not required help from Washington to defeat the residual cells after the coalition’s mission in Iraq was agreed to terminate.
However the fall of Assad in December led some to reassess that stance, together with members of the Coordination Framework, a coalition of primarily Shiite, Iran-allied political events that introduced present Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani to energy in late 2022, in keeping with the report.
