ISIS leader killed in Iraq was head of extremist group’s global operations

US military says Abdullah Al Rifai, known as Abu Khadija, was killed in an air strike on Thursday

The site of an air strike in Iraq's Anbar province that the US military said killed ISIS leader Abdullah Al Rifai. Photo: Iraqi National Intelligence Service

Iraq's security forces and the US-led coalition fighting ISIS have killed the leader of the militant group in Iraq and Syria, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani said on Friday.

Abdullah Al Rifai, also known as Abu Khadija, was “considered one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world”, Mr Al Sudani said in a post on X.

The US military's Central Command said Al Rifai was killed in an air strike in Iraq's western Anbar province on Thursday, along with another member of the group.

He was the “global ISIS No 2 leader, chief of global operations and the Delegated Committee emir”, Centcom said in a post on X that was accompanied by a video showing an air strike on a moving target.

“As the emir of ISIS’ most senior decision-making body, Abu Khadija maintained responsibility for operations, logistics, and planning conducted by ISIS globally, and directs a significant portion of finance for the group’s global organisation,” Centcom said.

“After the strike, Centcom and Iraqi forces moved to the strike site and found both dead ISIS terrorists. Both terrorists were wearing unexploded suicide vests and had multiple weapons,” it said, and added that Al Rifai's body was identified using a DNA sample collected during a previous raid which he escaped.

US President Donald Trump also announced the killing of Al Rifai in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“Today the fugitive leader of ISIS in Iraq was killed,” Mr Trump said. “He was relentlessly hunted down by our intrepid warfighters. His miserable life was terminated, along with another member of ISIS, in co-ordination with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish Regional Government.”

Washington declared Al Rifai a specially designated global terrorist in 2023. Centcom also confirmed on Saturday that Al Rifai's wife, whom it described as ''Chechen ISIS terrorist Umm Hussein'', had been arrested.

ISIS declared a “caliphate” in 2014 after capturing large parts of Iraq and Syria, beginning a rule marked by atrocities under its extreme interpretation of Sharia.

Iraqi forces backed by the US-led coalition and Iraqi militias defeated ISIS in late 2017, although sleeper cells continue to carry out attacks on the army and police in rural areas. The group lost its last territory in Syria two years later but maintains a presence in the country's vast desert.

The involvement of the coalition in the operation against Al Rifai comes as Mr Al Sudani faces pressure from Iran-linked Iraqi political and armed groups to order US forces to leave the country.

About 2,500 US troops are in Iraq, which now considers its security forces capable of confronting the threat from ISIS.

The US and Iraq announced in late September that the international coalition would end its decade-long military mission in Iraq's federally-administered areas within a year, and by September 2026 in the autonomous Kurdistan region.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shaibani said on Friday that Damascus was ready to co-operate with Iraq in combating ISIS.

“Syria's security is integral to Iraq's security,” Mr Al Shaibani said at a press conference after meeting Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein during his first visit to Baghdad.

Mr Hussein said the two sides had spoken “in detail about the movements of ISIS, whether on the Syrian-Iraqi border, inside Syria or inside Iraq”.