Four ISIS members, including two leaders, killed in eastern Iraq

BAGHDAD (Reuters): Four members of ISIS, including two senior leaders, were killed in an airstrike carried out by Iraqi aircraft in the Hamrin Mountains in eastern Iraq, security officials said on Saturday.

The Iraqi Security Media Cell, an official body responsible for disseminating security information, said in a statement four bodies of ISIS militants were found in the area where Iraqi F-16 fighter jets carried out the strike on Friday.

Talib al-Mousawi, an official at Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) – a grouping of armed factions originally set up to fight ISIS in 2014 that was subsequently recognized as an official security force, told Reuters the dead included two top ISIS leaders in the Diyala province in eastern Iraq.

The identity of another militant will be determined following an examination, the Security Media Cell said.

At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the IS “caliphate” imposed death and torture on communities in vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and had influence across the Middle East.

The caliphate collapsed in 2017 in Iraq, where it once had a base just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria in 2019, after a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition.

ISIS responded by scattering in autonomous cells; its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The UN estimates it at 10,000 in its heartlands.