Top Daesh commander ‘killed in Iraq’
Iraqi soldiers look out from a tank as they advances towards the Islamic State militants positions in the Old City in western Mosul, Iraq June 18, 2017. PHOTO: REUTERS
Iraqi security forces have killed Abu Yaser al-Issawi, an Islamic State commander who had claimed to be the leader of the group in Iraq and its “deputy caliph”, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi said on Thursday.
“Our heroic armed forces have eliminated Daesh commander Abu Yaser Al-Issawi as part of an intelligence-led operation,” Kadhimi tweeted.
Last week, Daesh claimed responsibility for a twin suicide bombing which killed at least 32 people in a crowded Baghdad market. It was the first big suicide bombing in Iraq for three years.
Iraqi authorities said the attack was a possible sign of the group reviving after its military defeat in 2017.
Suicide attacks on civilian targets were a near-daily tactic of the militant group during the US occupation of Iraq after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Many of the insurgents were later recruited by Islamic State, whose fighters swept across a third of Iraq in 2014.
By 2017, however, Islamic State insurgents had been driven from all territory they held. Their paramount leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, died in 2019 during a US raid in neighbouring Syria.