Iraqi militant leader Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who was Saddam Hussein’s right-hand man and a key force behind the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq, has been killed.
Iraqi media reports that he was killed in clashes in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad.
Al-Douri, 72, has been a fugitive in Iraq and Syria since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and gained notoriety as the King of Clubs in the US military’s Iraqi Most Wanted deck of playing cards.
Evading capture, al-Douri was involved in the insurgency against the US-led occupation of Iraq and was confirmed as the new leader of the banned Ba’ath party in 2007, after the execution of Saddam Hussein.
He is currently the head of the Iraqi militant group Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order (JRTN), described by Al-Jazeera as subscribing to an idiology that is “a mix of Islamic and pan-Arab nationalistic ideas”.
JRTN is believed to have been central to the rapid spread of the Islamic State in Iraq last year, when Islamist militants captured large swathes of territory including the city of Mosul, aided by a coalition of Islamist parters, including JRTN.
