Acting Isis leader 'killed in US-led coalition air strike'

The deputy leader of Isis who has been standing in for the terror group's injured caliph, Abu Alaa al-Afri, has been killed in a US-led coalition air strike in northern Iraq, the Iraqi defence ministry has claimed.

Afri, also known as Abdul Rahman Mustafa Mohammed, was in a mosque in the town of Tal Afar near the city of Mosul when he was targeted and killed, according to Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Brig-Gen Tahsin Ibrahim.

Ibrahim added that Afri had been meeting a number of Isis members in the mosque, many of whom were also killed. He did not confirm the number of casualties.

The US State Department had last week announced that it would offer a $7 million (€4.5 million) reward for the capture of Afri, naming him as Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli.

Afri, who Newsweek last month exclusively revealed was a former physics teacher in the city of Mosul who had been chosen to stand-in for Baghdadi, was a key coordination link between Baghdadi and his inner circle and also his emirs in different provinces across the group's extensive caliphate in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

It is believed that Afri, when senior al-Qaeda operatives Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri were killed in 2010, was Osama bin Laden's preferred choice to become emir of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group which eventually morphed into Isis. Further, last July, The Telegraph revealed Isis's cabinet, reporting that Afri, named as Abu Suja in the report, was a "general coordinator for the affairs of martyrs and women".

According to the adviser to the Iraqi government on Isis, Dr Hisham al Hashimi, Afri is believed to have travelled to Afghanistan in 1998, before becoming a senior member of al-Qaeda after its future Iraqi leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi pledged allegiance to the terror group in 2004. He oversaw the sharia authorities in northern Iraq and "was very strict", notes the Iraqi adviser.

Hassan Hassan, Middle East analyst and co-author of the New York Times bestseller Isis: Inside the Army of Terror, told Newsweek at the time of Afri's replacement of Baghdadi that he was "one of its most important players".

"Abu Alaa [Afri] seems to have become more prominent in recent months, especially after the group began to suffer tactical defeats in Syria and Iraq since December. He replaced [Isis's Syria governor Abu Ali] al-Anbari as al-Baghdadi's top man after al-Baghdadi became less involved in decision making for security reasons," Hassan said.

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