Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai, also known as Abu Khadija, was deputy caliph for ISIS and “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world,” according to a statement by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
“The Iraqis continue their remarkable victories over the forces of darkness and terrorism,” al-Sudani wrote on social media platform X.
Al-Rifai was killed in an airstrike in Anbar Province in western Iraq on March 15, conducted jointly by Iraqi national intelligence and U.S.-led coalition forces.
President Donald Trump heralded the strike on his Truth Social media platform as an example of his “peace through strength” foreign policy platform.
“Today the fugitive leader of ISIS in Iraq was killed,” Trump wrote on Friday. “He was relentlessly hunted down by our intrepid warfighters … in coordination with the Iraqi Government and the Kurdish Regional Government.”
The strike is the third major blow to ISIS in recent months, following U.S.-led strikes against senior ISIS leaders and attack planners in Somalia in February and Syria in December 2024.
ISIS, which controlled vast swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2015 and 2016, shifted to an insurgency strategy after losing much of its territory there and quickly expanded in both size and influence throughout much of northern and central Africa.
The group remains an influential player among the many Islamist terror networks that have proliferated throughout the Middle East and Africa in the absence of stable governments.
Civil leadership in Iraq is concerned about a possible resurgence of the group in the Middle East due to uncertainties about Syria’s new government and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region.
