The leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been killed, Iraq's prime minister said on Friday, describing him as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world.”
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufay'i, also known as Abu Khadija, had been killed by Iraqi security forces, with the support of the coalition led by the United States that fights the Islamic State.
The Islamic State imposed the Islamist government of the line hard to more than millions of people in Syria and Iraq for years, and has been trying to organize a return in the Middle East, West and Asia.
The former leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a caliphate of more than a quarter of Iraq and Syria in 2014 before he was killed in a raid by the special forces of the United States in the northwest of Syria in 2019 when the group collapsed.
The central command of the United States said last July that the group was trying to “reconstitute after several years of decreased capacity.”
The command based its evaluation on the affirmations of the Islamic State to set up 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate that would put the group “in rhythm more than double the number of attacks” claimed the previous year.
–Nayera Abdallah report in Dubai and Muayad Hameed Suadi in Baghdad; Additional Jana Choukeir reports, Nayera Abdallah writing, Alison Williams and Timothy Heritage edition