Iraqi PM says Islamic State leader for Iraq and Syria killed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) -The leader of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been killed, Iraq's prime minister said on Friday, describing him as "one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world."

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufay'i, also known as Abu Khadija, had been killed by Iraqi security forces, with the support of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.

Islamic State imposed hardline Islamist rule over millions of people in Syria and Iraq for years, and has been trying to stage a comeback in the Middle East, the West and Asia.

Former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate over a quarter of Iraq and Syria in 2014 before he was killed in a raid by U.S. special forces in northwest Syria in 2019 as the group collapsed.

The U.S. Central Command said last July that the group was been attempting to "reconstitute following several years of decreased capability."

The command based its assessment on Islamic State claims of mounting 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate that would put the group "on pace to more than double the number of attacks" claimed the year before.

(Reporting by Nayera Abdallah in Dubai and Muayad Hameed Suadi in Baghdad; Additional reporting by Jana Choukeir, Writing by Nayera Abdallah, Editing by Alison Williams and Timothy Heritage)

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