The Latest Breaking News from Islamic State

Abu Ibrahim al-Quraishi, a religious scholar and former soldier in Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s army, led Islamic State from the shadows for a little over two years before he blew himself up during a raid by U.S. forces on a house in northern Syria.

The death of its second leader in just over two years has dealt another blow to Islamic State, the extremist jihadist group which once ruled large parts of Iraq and Syria.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Thursday that U.S. forces killed the leader of Islamic State during an overnight raid in Syria that first responders reported left 13 civilians dead, calling the operation a success because it eliminated a “major terrorist threat to the world.”

The leader of the Islamic State group killed in a U.S. raid overnight in northwest Syria was largely a mystery, with almost no known photos, never appearing in public or in the group’s videos