Abdullah Maki Musleh al-Rifai, the leader of ISIS for Iraq and Syria, has been killed. The Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, announced the death on Friday. Iraqi security forces, alongside the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS, were responsible for killing Al-Rifai, who was also known as Abu Khadija.
The former ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had declared a caliphate over a large portion of Iraq and Syria in 2014, before being killed in a U.S. special forces operation in northwestern Syria in 2019. The U.S. Central Command stated last year that ISIS had been attempting to “reconstitute” itself after years of declining capabilities.
