Iraq

Sources say senior Da’esh figure killed in Mosul

A Da’esh leader has been killed in an air strike in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, residents and a local medical source said on Thursday. Radwan Taleb al-Hamdouni, whom the sources described as the radical militant group’s leader in Mosul, was killed with his driver when their car was hit in a western district of the city on Wednesday afternoon.

Hamdouni was buried later on Wednesday. Large numbers of supporters, some carrying black Da’esh (ISIS) flags, attended the funeral, one source said. Two U.S. officials said they were unable to confirm whether Hamdouni had been killed. Hamdouni had been the ISIS ‘wali’, or governor, of Mosul, which was captured by the group in June and is the largest city in a self-declared ISIS caliphate straddling the border between northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi chose a mosque in Mosul to deliver a sermon in July, his only appearance since he assumed the title of caliph, or Muslim leader. Sources in Iraq said two weeks ago that he had been wounded in an air strike. The movement later released a defiant audio statement by Baghdadi. A senior Iraqi official told Reuters earlier this month that Mosul was the focus of government efforts to defeat ISIS, because of the city’s size and symbolic status after Baghdadi’s speech there.

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