Leading ISIS commander killed in Iraqi air strike

ISLAMABAD: One of ISIS’s top commanders is believed to have been killed by an Iraqi air strike in the city of Barwana, the country’s army has said.

Nasser Mohammed al-Obeidi was the second deputy of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and in charge of the terror group’s operations in western Iraq and eastern Syria, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said. Obeidi was once a brigade commander for former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's special forces unit, the Republican Guards.

He was also a fugitive from Abu Ghraib prison and a former prisoner in Camp Bucca, a spokesman of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command, Col Mohammed Ibrahim, was quoted as saying by CNN.

The United States-led coalition has announced similar killings. Obeidi’s alleged death comes just days after ISIS’s chief spokesman in Iraq, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, was said to be severely wounded in another air strike. Al-Adnani, earmarked as the group’s next leader, was reported as having lost ‘a large amount of blood’ after being hit in the town of Barwana, in the Anbar province, Saturday. He was moved to the city of Hit for initial treatment before being transferred to Mosul flanked by security guards, CNN reported.

A spokesman for Iraq’s Joint Operations Command confirmed that they had been following Adnani’s movements for well over a month before he was injured on Thursday in what is believed to have been a targeted attack. Adnani is considered the terror network’s most prominent public figure in Iraq, having made several audio recordings which have been posted online.

He is held in the same bracket of notoriety as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and has been suggested as the militants’ next leader should Baghdadi lose his position. Adnani was held in custody - believed to have been at the American detention facility, Camp Bucca - after being captured by US troops in 2005, remaining a prisoner until 2010.

A £2.5million bounty was issued in May 2014 for information leading to the Syrian born extremist, referring to his ‘repeated calls for attacks against Westerns’. In June of that year, he declared a ‘caliphate’ for parts of Syria and Iraq indicating ISIS’ aim of not just being a terrorist group, but a governing body.