Iraq kills senior Daesh leader; Trump says his 'miserable life was terminated'
Although Iraq had proclaimed in 2017 the defeat of the group on its territory, Daesh 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 senior Daesh figure, sanctioned by the US in 2023, was the group's so-called governor of its 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 coalition in Iraq.
"Today the fugitive leader of Daesh 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 Daesh, 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 Daesh #2 leader... and one other Daesh operative."
It said that both fighters had been wearing unexploded "suicide vests" and that it had identified Rufayi through a DNA match.
Last October, Baghdad said Iraqi forces had killed nine Daesh group commanders. They included the so-called governor of Iraq for Daesh, Jassim al-Mazrouei Abu Abdel Qader, Iraq's Joint Operations Command said at the time.
Daesh 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 the group 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.
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