Officials say ISIS deputy caliph Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufay'i was killed in an airstrike targeting his location in Iraq's Anbar desert on Thursday.
One of the senior leaders of the ISIS terror group was reportedly killed, in what Iraq described as a US-backed operation.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani posted on social media on Friday (3/14) that the country's intelligence services had "succeeded in eliminating" ISIS deputy caliph Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufay'i.
Sudani did not say when or how al-Rufay'i was killed, but called the death a "significant security achievement."
Iraqi special forces, in a subsequent post on the social media platform X, said al-Rufay'i was killed Thursday in an airstrike targeting his location in Iraq's Anbar desert.
Officials said the attack was the result of a two-year effort to track his location, with the breakthrough coming in the past six months.
Officials also said they captured seven more ISIS members, including two women, in a follow-up operation in Anbar. Intelligence gathered at the scene of the airstrike led to the capture of five more in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil.
Iraqi officials say al-Rufay'i, also known as Abu Khadija, is the top ISIS official for Iraq and Syria. They also say al-Rufay'i also plays a key role in the group's external operations.
A recent United Nations (UN) report, based on intelligence from UN member states, said al-Rufay'i ran ISIS operations across Iraq, Syria, Turkey and other parts of the Middle East.
Other UN intelligence reports have identified al-Rufay'i as a member of ISIS's delegation committee, seen as the terror group's most influential executive body.
US officials have not commented on the Iraqi claims.
Various intelligence estimates put the number of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria at between 1,500 and 3,000, with the majority operating in Syria.
U.S. military officials warned in July of a possible ISIS resurgence in the region, adding that the terror group would double the number of attacks it had carried out in Iraq and Syria the previous year.
Most recently, in December, U.S. forces carried out a series of airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. The strikes hit targets in areas abandoned by anti-terror forces loyal to former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Although Iraq and Syria were the ideological centers of ISIS's founding, there has been a growing consensus among intelligence officials and experts that the terror group no longer sees the Middle East as its global base of operations.
Officials, including American ones, say there is a growing belief that the group is now led by Abdul Qadir Mumin, who is based in Somalia. There, Mumin rose to prominence as the emir of the group's Somali affiliate, IS-Somalia.
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