ISIS Chief Killed In Iraq, Trump Says ‘Fugitive Chief Relentlessly Hunted Down’
The Iraqi Prime Minister stated that personnel of the nation’s nationwide intelligence service, working with coalition forces commanded by the US, 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 stated in a press release posted on X.
Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai, or “Abu Khadija,” was “deputy caliph” of the militant group and “one of the harmful terrorists in Iraq and the world,” the assertion stated, as reported by CNN.
On his Reality Social platform Friday evening, US President Donald Trump stated, “Right now 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 stated the operation was executed by airstrike within the western Iraqi province of Anbar. Based on a second official, al-Rifai’s loss of life was verified on Friday, however the operation occurred Thursday evening. They weren’t permitted to make public feedback, so 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 international locations pledged to work collectively to fight IS.
Iraqi International Minister Fouad Hussein, in keeping with the report, stated at a information convention that “there are widespread challenges going through Syrian and Iraqi society, and particularly the terrorists of IS.” He stated the officers had spoken “intimately concerning the actions of ISIS, whether or not on the Syrian-Iraqi border, inside Syria or inside Iraq” in the course of the go to.
Hussein additional referred to an operations room fashioned by Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon at a current assembly in Amman to confront IS and stated 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 help 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 referred to as Abu Mohammed al-Golani and fought as an al-Qaida militant in Iraq after the US invasion of 2003 and later fought in opposition to Assad’s authorities in Syria.
The US and Iraq introduced an settlement final 12 months 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 risk posed by IS was underneath 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.
