OAN Staff Abril Elfi
8:43 AM – Saturday, March 15, 2025
Iraq’s prime minister has announced that the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been killed.
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According to a statement by Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai was killed in an operation by members of the Iraqi national intelligence service along with U.S.-led coalition forces.
President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social that al-Rifai’s “miserable life was terminated.”
“Today the fugitive leader of ISIS in Iraq was killed,” Trump wrote Friday night. “He was relentlessly hunted down by our intrepid warfighters. His miserable life was terminated, along with another member of ISIS, in coordination with the Iraqi Government and the Kurdish Regional Government.”
“PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!” the president added.
In an airstrike in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, U.S. Central Command said that its forces, working with Iraqi intelligence and security forces, killed the “Global ISIS #2 leader, Chief of Global Operations and the Delegated Committee Emir – Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rifai, alias ‘Abu Khadijah,’ and one other ISIS operative.”
“As the Emir of ISIS’ most senior decision-making body, Abu Khadijah maintained responsibility for operations, logistics, and planning conducted by ISIS globally, and directed a significant portion of finance for the group’s global organization,” they said.
They continued stating that when U.S. and Iraqi forces arrived to the scene of the strike, they discovered two dead ISIS targets with various weapons and unexploded “suicide vests” on.
Al-Rifai was identified through DNA collected in a previous raid.
“Abu Khadijah was one of the most important ISIS members in the entire global ISIS organization. We will continue to kill terrorists and dismantle their organizations that threaten our homeland and U.S., allied and partner personnel in the region and beyond,” Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla said in a statement.
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