Click to see full-size image. Source: the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.
Iraqi security forces have killed a senior leader of ISIS responsible for “foreign operations,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani announced on March 14.
The leader, Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufayi, “was considered one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world,” al-Sudani said on the X social network, previously known as Twitter.
Al-Rufayi, who was sanctioned by the United States in 2023, was ISIS’s so-called governor of Syrian and Iraqi provinces, al-Sudani added, noting that the leader was also “responsible for the foreign operations offices.”
Al-Sudani did not say when al-Rufayi was killed, but revealed that the operation was carried out by Iraqi intelligence in cooperation with the U.S.-led coalition.
Photos posted to social networks showed the dead body of al-Rufayi near a heavily damaged minitruck in an undisclosed part of Iraq.
From its side, Iraq’s Security media Cell revealed in a statement that Al-Rufayi was killed in a complex operation involving a strike and an aerial landing. Twelve suspects affiliated with the leader, including two women, were later arrested in two separate raids linked to the operation, according to the cell.
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Despite receiving a major defeat in 2017, ISIS remains active in Iraq with cells operating mainly in the northern and western parts of the country.
Last October, Iraqi forces killed nine commanders of ISIS, including the so-called governor of Iraq for the terrorist group, Jassim al-Mazrouei Abu Abdel Qader, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said at the time.
The recent security achievements shows that Iraqi government forces are now capable of countering the threat posed by ISIS on their own.
Still, the U.S. maintains some 2,500 troops in Iraq. The two countries announced last September that the international coalition would end its military mission in federal Iraq within a year, and by September 2026 in the autonomous region of Kurdistan.
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