Nine ISIS commanders in Iraq, including the group's top leader in the country, have been killed in a joint US-Iraqi raid, Baghdad said on Tuesday, with the Pentagon saying two American troops were injured.
Iraq's Joint Operations Command said in a statement that counter-terrorism forces “killed nine terrorists, among them the so-called governor of Iraq” for ISIS, identifying him as Jassim Al Mazrouei Abu Abdel Qader.
The statement said the raid in the northern Hamrin Mountains was carried out “with technical support” and intelligence provided by the US-led coalition, and that “large quantities of weapons” were seized in the operation, which was continuing.
Pentagon spokesman Maj Gen Pat Ryder said that US Central Command and Iraqi forces “conducted a partner raid in Iraq targeting several senior ISIS leaders” overnight.
“The raid resulted in the death of multiple ISIS operatives,” Maj Gen Ryder told journalists. “We do have reports of two US service members that were injured."
ISIS overran large areas of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in 2014 and was defeated in Iraq in 2017 by local forces backed by the international military coalition. In 2019, it lost the last territory it held in Syria to US-backed Kurdish forces.
But remnants of the group are still active in Iraq and continue to launch sporadic attacks.