US President Donald Trump says a leader of the Islamic State group has been killed in Iraq.
“He was relentlessly hunted by our brave military. His miserable life was ended along with another member of the group in coordination with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional government,” Trump wrote in the social network Truth Social late in the evening of 14 March Washington time (in Kiev it was the night of 15 March).
The Central Command of the US Armed Forces (CENTCOM) said that the US military carried out an airstrike in Al-Anbar province in Iraq on 13 March, killing the leader of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, Abdullah Makki Muslim al-Rifai (aka Abu Khadija), and another militant.
CENTCOM said Abu Khadija was” one of the most important members” of the terrorist group. He was responsible for the logistics and planning of Islamic State terrorist attacks around the world. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani described him as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world”.