The Head of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was killed in Iraq in an operation by members of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service as well as coalition forces led by the United States, the US central command and the Iraqi Prime Minister announced on Friday.
“The Iraqis continue their impressive victories on the forces of darkness and terrorism,” said Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani in a statement published on X.
Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai, or “Abu Khadija”, was “assistant caliph” of the militant group and known as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world,” the statement said.
Friday evening, on his social platform of truth, President Trump wrote: “Today, the fugitive head of the Islamic State in Iraq was killed. He was tirelessly hunted down by our intrepid fighters “in coordination with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional government.
“Peace by force!” Trump posted.
One hundred reported In an article on social networks that Abu Khadija was killed Thursday in an “precision air strike” in the Iraqi province of Al Anbar in an operation involving Iraqi and Centcom forces. A second Islamic State agent was also killed in the strike. An aerial strike video was also published.
After the air strike, the American and Iraqi forces moved to find the two deceased terrorists wearing unploded and armed suicide vests with several weapons, said Centcom. Abu Khadijah was identified using DNA tests that had been collected during a previous raid which he had escaped.
“Abu Khadijah was one of the most important members of the ISIS of the entire World Islamic State Organization,” General Michael Erik Kurilla, commander of Centcom said in a statement. “We will continue to kill terrorists and dismantle their organizations who threaten our homeland and us, an ally and partner personnel in the region and beyond.”
The announcement came the same day as the first visit to the first Syrian diplomat in Iraq, during which the two countries undertook to work together to fight against the Islamic State.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein said at a press conference that “there are common challenges facing the Syrian and Iraqi society, and in particular IS terrorists”. He said that the officials had spoken “in detail about the movements of the Islamic State, whether on the Syrian-Iraqi border, inside Syria or inside Iraq” during the visit.
Murtadha al-Sudani / Anadolu via Getty Images
Hussein referred to an operations room formed by Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon during a recent meeting in Amman to face, and said that she would soon be starting to work.
The relationship between Iraq and Syria is somewhat heavy after The fall of former Syrian president Bashar Assad. Al-Sudani came to power with the support of a coalition of factions supported by Iran, and Tehran was a major of Assad donor. The current acting president of Syria, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, was previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani and fought as Al-Qaida activist in Iraq after the 2003 American invasion, then fought against the government of Assad in Syria.
But the Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, focused on the historical ties between the two countries.
“Throughout history, Baghdad and Damascus were the capitals of the Arab and Islamic world, sharing knowledge, culture and the economy,” he said.
The strengthening of the partnership between the two countries “will not only benefit our peoples, but will also contribute to the stability of the region, which makes us less dependent on external powers and better able to determine our own destiny,” he said.
The operation and the visit arise at a time when Iraqi officials are worried about an Islamic State resurgence in the wake of the fall of Assad in Syria.
While the new leaders of Syria – led by the former Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir Al -Sham – have continued Islamic State cells since taking power, some fear a rupture of overall security This could allow the group to stage a resurgence.
The United States and Iraq announced an agreement last year to complete the military mission in Iraq of a coalition led by the Americans fighting the Islamic State group by September 2025, the American forces having left certain bases where they stationed troops during a military presence of two decades in the country.
When the agreement was concluded to put an end to the mission of the coalition in Iraq, Iraqi political leaders said that the threat of the Islamic State was under control and that they no longer needed the help of Washington to repel the remaining cells.
But the fall of Assad in December led some to reassess this position, including members of the coordination framework, a coalition of mainly Shiites Iranian political parties who brought the current power of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia Al-Sudani at the end of 2022.