The head of Iraq was killed in an operation by members of the Iraqi National Secret Service together with the coalition forces guided by the US-led, the Iraqi Prime Minister said on Friday.
“The Iraqi continue their impressive victories over the forces of darkness and terrorism,” said Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in a statement that at the social media location X.
Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai or “Abu Khadija” was “deputy caliph” of the militant group and “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world”, the explanation says.
On Friday evening, US President Donald Trump said: “Today, the refugee leader of ISIS was killed in Iraq. He was relentlessly hunted by our fearless adults”, related to the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional government.
“Peace through strength!” Trump posted.
A security officer said the operation was carried out by an air raid in the province of Anbar in western Iraq. A second official said that the operation took place on Thursday evening, but Al-Frei’s death was confirmed on Friday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not justified to comment publicly.
The announcement took place on the same day as the first visit to the Syria Top diplomat in Iraq, in which the two countries committed themselves to work together to fight Isis.
At a press conference, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein said that “there are common challenges for Syrian and Iraqi society and especially the terrorists of ISIS”. He said the officials spoke “in detail about the movements of ISIS, be it on the Syrian-Iraqi border, within Syria or in Iraq” during the visit.
Hussein referred to a surgical area that was formed by Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon at a meeting in Amman for the confrontation of Isis, and said it would start work soon.
The relationship between Iraq and Syria is somewhat burdened after the fall of the former Syrian President Bashar Assad. Al-Sudani came to power with the support of a coalition of Iran, and Tehran was an important supporter of Assad.
The current interim president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani and, after the US invasion of 2003, fought as an al-Qaida militant in Iraq and later fought against Assad’s government in Syria.
But the Syrian preliminary Secretary of State Asaad Hassan al-Shibani focused on historical relationships between the two countries.
“In the course of history, Baghdad and Damascus were the capitals of the Arab and Islamic world that share knowledge, culture and economy,” he said.
The strengthening of the partnership between the two countries will “not only benefit our peoples, but also contribute to the stability of the region, which makes us less dependent on external powers and is better able to determine our own fate,” he said.
Nathan Sales, former coordinator of fighting terrorism from the U.S. State Department, discusses the attack in New Orleans, its connections to ISIS and how the group still inspires people in western countries.
The operation and the visit come at a time when Iraqi officials are concerned after the fall of Assad in Syria that is an ISIS resignation.
While the new rulers have been introduced to Syria by the Islamist former incriminating group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-Isis cells since the supply of power, some fear that the overall security has to be broken down, which could enable the group to stage a rescue.
Last year, the United States and Iraq rejected an agreement on the military mission in Iraq of a coalition led by America that is fighting against the Islamic state group by September 2025. The US forces left some bases in which they stationed troops for a two decades of military presence in the country.
When the agreement to terminate the coalition’s mission in Iraq was achieved, the political leaders of the Iraqi political leaders said that the threat of ISIS was under control and they no longer needed the help of Washington to reject the remaining cells.
But the case of Assad in December led to some to rethink this attitude, including members of the coordination framework, a coalition of mainly Shiite political parties that brought al-Sudani to power at the end of 2022.
