The Iraqi Prime Minister said that the country’s National Intelligence Service personnel, along with the United States coalition forces, killed the head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as CNN quoted AP.
“Iraqis have continued their impressive victory over the forces of darkness and terrorism,” Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani said in a statement issued on X.
According to CNN report, the statement said that Abdullah Maki Mosleh al-Rifi or “Abu Khadija” was the “sub Khalifa” of the terrorist group and “Iraq and one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world.”
US President Donald Trump said on his Truth Social Platform on Friday night, “ISIS’s fugitive leader was killed in Iraq today. He was constantly chased by our fearless war fighters in coordination with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional government.”
Trump said, “Peace through power!”
According to CNN report, a security officer said that the operation was carried out by an airstrike in Western Iraqi province of Anbar. According to the second official, Al-Rifi’s death was confirmed on Friday, but the operation took place on Thursday night. He was not allowed to make public comments, so he spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The announcement was made on the same day when the first visit to Iraq of Syrian’s top diplomat, during which the two countries pledged to work together to fight the IS.
According to the report, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fauud Hussain said in a press conference that “Syrian and Iraqi society have general challenges, and especially IS terrorists.” He said that the authorities “spoke in detail about the activities of ISIS during the visit, whether it is on the Syria-Iraqi border, inside Syria or inside Iraq.”
Hussain mentioned the operation room formed by Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon in a recent meeting in Amman to compete with IS and said it would start working soon.
The relationship between Iraq and Syria has become somewhat tense after the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Al-Sudani came to power with the support of the coalition of Iran-backed factions and Tehran was a major supporter of Assad.
The current interim President of Syria Ahmed al-Sharaa was earlier known as Abu Mohammad al-Golani and fought as an al-Qaeda militant in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion and later fought against the Assad government in Syria.
The US and Iraq announced an agreement last year under which by September 2025, the military mission of the US -led coalition fighting the Islamic State Group in Iraq will be abolished, under which the US Army would release some of the bases where it had deployed its troops during its military attendance for more than two decades in the country.
Iraqi political authorities announced that the threat generated by IS is under control and after consenting to end the mission of the alliance in Iraq, they no longer need assistance from Washington to defeat the remaining terrorists.
But after the collapse of Assad in December, some people reconsidered the stance that also included members of the coordination structure, mainly a coalition of Shia, Iran-Sambhid political parties, which brought the current Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani to power at the end of 2022, according to the report.