SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqi forces have killed a senior Islamic State (ISIS) leader in the country, said Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said.
Kadhimi announced the killing of Abu Hassan al-Gharibawi and Ghanem Sabah Jawad in a tweet on Tuesday.
Kadhimi said Gharibawi was the so-called leader of southern Iraq in Islamic State and Jawad was responsible for transporting suicide bombers.
“The terrorist Abu Hassan al-Gharibawi, the so-called leader of southern Iraq in Daesh, and the terrorist Ghanem Sabah Jawad, who is responsible for transporting suicide bombers, were both eliminated today, in addition to other terrorist elements,” Kadhimi tweeted.
“These victories are part of our heroes’ pledge to eliminate the leaders of Daesh gangs & in loyalty to the Iraqi martyrs’ blood,” he said.
On Thursday, Kadhimi also announced the killing of Abu Yaser al-Issawi, an ISIS commander who had claimed to be the leader of the group in Iraq and its “deputy caliph”.
Last week, Islamic State claimed responsibility for a twin suicide bombing that 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 mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents during the U.S. 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 in Iraq. Their paramount leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, died in 2019 during a U.S. raid in neighboring Syria.
