The Iraqi Prime Minister announced that the head of Islamic State in Iraq & Syria, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed by the Iraqi National Intelligence Service and U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq during an operation.
In a post on X, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani stated that “the Iraqis continue to achieve impressive victories against the forces of darkness and terrorism.”
The statement stated that Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai (or “Abu Khadija”) was the “deputy Caliph” and “one the most dangerous terrorists both in Iraq and around the world.”
An anonymous security official, who was not authorized by his employer to make public comments, said that the airstrike was conducted in Anbar Province in western Iraq.
The operation takes place at a moment when Iraqi officials worry about a resurgence of IS following the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the former president of Syria.
While the new Syrian rulers, led by the Islamist ex-insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have been pursuing IS cells ever since they took power in 2011, some are concerned that a breakdown in security could allow IS to resurge.
Last year, the U.S. announced that it and Iraq had reached an agreement to wind down a military mission in Iraq by an American-led alliance fighting the Islamic State. U.S. troops will depart some bases in Iraq where they stationed their troops for a two-decade-long military presence.
Iraqi leaders claimed that the threat of IS had been beaten back and that they no longer required Washington’s assistance to defeat the remaining cells.
The fall of Assad in December led many to reassess their stance. This included members of the Coordination Framework – a coalition of mainly Shiite political parties, allied with Iran, that brought the current Iraqi prime minister, Mohammad Shia al-Sudani, to power at the end of 2022.
Asaad Haasan al Shibani, the interim Syrian Foreign Minister, also traveled to Baghdad on Friday and met his Iraqi counterpart. Discussions were expected to focus on the fight against the Islamic State.