BAGHDAD: Iraqi authorities announced on Tuesday that security forces had killed nine Daesh group commanders including the jihadists’ top figure in the country in a raid in the northern mountains.
Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said in a statement that counterterrorism forces “killed nine terrorists, among them the so-called governor of Iraq” for Daesh, naming him as Jassim Al-Mazrouei Abu Abdel Qader.
Iraqi security analyst Fadel Abu Raghif said Mazrouei had “assumed control of the (Daesh) Iraq province less than a year ago.”
The statement noted that the operation in the Hamrin Mountains was carried out “with technical support” and intelligence provided by the US-led anti-jihadist coalition.
It also said that “large quantities of weapons” were seized in the operation, which was “still ongoing.”
Daesh overran large swaths of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, proclaiming its “caliphate.”
It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 by Iraqi forces backed by the international military coalition, and in 2019 lost the last territory it held in Syria to US-backed Kurdish forces, but remnants of the group remain active in Iraq and continue to launch sporadic attacks.
A statement from the office of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani announced “the killing of the so-called governor of Iraq and eight senior leaders of the terrorist Daesh organization.”
Al-Sudani said the operation targeted Daesh hideouts in the Hamrin Mountains, vowing to “pursue ... and eliminate” jihadists wherever they may be in Iraq.
The US military announced on Friday that “precision airstrikes” conducted by Iraqi forces earlier this month had killed a senior Daesh leader and three other militants.
