The second deputy of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed during an Iraqi air force strike in the city of Barwana, just east of Haditha, the Iraqi military said Saturday.
Assi Ali Mohammed Nasser al-Obeidi was a top ISIS military commander in western Iraq and eastern Syria, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command said.
Obeidi had been a brigade commander in the special forces of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards, a fugitive from Abu Ghraib prison and a former prisoner in Camp Bucca, a spokesman of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command, Col. Mohammed Ibrahim, told CNN.
Haditha is 145 kilometers (90 miles) northwest of Ramadi in Anbar province.
In recent weeks, the U.S.-led coalition has announced similar killings.
In late December, it said multiple figures within ISIS senior leadership had died over a few weeks. One of the leaders killed was an operative closely linked to the ringleader of the November attacks in Paris, a spokesman for the coalition said.
Col. Steve Warren said 10 senior ISIS leaders operating in both Iraq and Syria, “including several external attack planners,” with designs on attacking western targets, had been killed in airstrikes.
As reported by CNN