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Coalition airstrike kills Islamic State leader in eastern Syria, Iraq says

Mu'taz Numan 'Abd Nayif Najm al-Jaburi was killed in a coalition-led airstrike, Iraq's intelligence services said.

TOPSHOT - Relatives of farmer Hamad al-Ibrahim clean his damaged land in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz on March 13, 2020, a year after the fall of the Islamic State's (IS) caliphate. - A year after the last black flag of the Islamic State group was lowered in the Syrian village of Baghouz, traces of the jihadist group are still all around this small and remote village near the Iraqi border, where Kurdish fighters and the US-led coalition declared the IS proto-state defeated in March 2019 after a bli
Relatives of farmer Hamad al-Ibrahim clean his damaged land in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz on March 13, 2020, a year after the fall of the Islamic State's caliphate. — DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images

An airstrike in eastern Syria carried out by the US-led military coalition assembled to fight the Islamic State (IS) has killed one of the group's senior figures, the Iraqi counterterrorism agency said today.

Mu'taz Numan 'Abd Nayif Najm al-Jaburi headed the terrorist group’s foreign operations, the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service said in a statement. Jaburi, who used the nom de guerre Hajji Taysir, was known as the Islamic State’s governor of Iraq. 

There was no confirmation from the US military today; the US Department of Justice has since September 2019 offered up to a $5 million bounty for information on his whereabouts. The department describes Jaburi as one of IS' most important leaders, and one who oversaw the group’s chemical and biological weapons research as the deputy head of IS manufacturing in Syria.

The reported strike on Jaburi in Deir ez-Zor was carried out by the US-led international military coalition using intelligence provided by Iraq, Iraq's counterterrorism agency said. 

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