BAGHDAD: Iraqi authorities announced on Tuesday that security forces had killed nine Islamic State (IS) group commanders, including the banned militant group’s 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 IS, naming him as Jassim al-Mazrouei Abu Abdel Qader.
Iraqi security analyst Fadel Abu Raghif told AFP that Mazrouei had “assumed control of the [IS] 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 coalition.
It also said that “large quantities of weapons” were seized in the operation, which was “still ongoing”.
The IS group overran large swathes of Iraq and neighbouring 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 organisation”, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
Sudani said the operation targeted IS hideouts in the Hamrin Mountains, vowing to “pursue … and eliminate” militants wherever they may be in Iraq.
Iraqi security forces, supported by the US-led coalition, have carried out numerous raids on suspected IS hideouts.
The US military announced on Friday that “precision air strikes” conducted by Iraqi forces earlier this month had killed a senior IS leader and three other militants.
At the end of August, a joint operation by US and Iraqi forces killed 15 IS group fighters in Iraq’s western desert.
A report by United Nations experts published in July estimated there were around 1,500 to 3,000 jihadists remaining in Iraq and Syria.
The US has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria as part of the coalition, which Washington and Baghdad announced last month will end its decade-long military mission in Iraq within a year.
