A top commander of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq, Nasser Mohammed al-Obeidi has been killed in an Strike by the Iraqi Air Force.
The Iraqi military announced on late Saturday that al-Obeidi was killed in an airstrike in the city of Barwana, east of Haditha. Haditha is about 145 kilometers northwest of Ramadi in Anbar province in Iraq.
However, according what we’ve gathered from local media sources in Iraq, on Friday, there were reports that the Iraqi Joint Special Operations Command had killed 35 ISIS fighters in the city of Barwana. It was also said that six vehicles belonging to ISIS, together with many arms and ammunitions, were destroyed. But there was no mentioning of a death of a high-profile figure of the group until Saturday.
“The Iraqi Army Aviation in cooperation with Jazeera and Badiya Operations Command had carried out six air strikes on ISIS terrorist gangs, killing 35 terrorists and destructing six vehicles including a booby-trapped armored military carrier in al-Sakranat area in Barwana city”, Iraqi News quoted an unnamed military source as saying on Friday.
CNN reports that before his death, al-Obeidi was the second deputy of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who claims to the caliphate of the group.
According to the Iraqi military, al-Obeidi was operating in western Iraq and eastern Syria, commanding and directing attacks in these areas on behalf of ISIS.
A spokesman of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command, Col. Mohammed Ibrahim also told CNN that al- Obeidi had been a brigade commander in the special forces of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards. He was also a fugitive from Abu Ghraib prison, and a former prisoner in Camp Bucca. Camp Bucca was a detention facility maintained by the United States military in the vicinity of Umm Qasr in Iraq.
The US-led coalition fighting ISIS has announced similar killings of ringleaders of the group in the past few weeks. The coalition said a member of ISIS closely linked to the ringleader of the November attacks in Paris which left some 130 people dead has been killed in an airstrike.
In addition to this, spokesman for the coalition, Col. Steve Warren has also said some 10 senior ISIS leaders operating in both Iraq and Syria, including several external attack planners with designs on attacking western targets have been killed in airstrikes.
ISIS proclaimed a worldwide caliphate in June 2014, naming Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as its caliph. The group claims religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide. But this assertion by the group has been strongly rejected by many mainstream Muslim groups.
Currently, ISIS has control over vast landlocked territories in Iraq and Syria with population estimates ranging between 2.8 million and 8 million people. The group enforces strict Sharia (Law) based on the radical fundamental doctrines of Wahhabism. And since taken over these areas, ISIS is said to have committed heinous crimes against civilians living in areas it controls. Human rights groups have leveled allegations of beheadings, public flogging, amputations, mass killings, and persecutions of non Muslims against ISIS.
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