The head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been killed in Iraq in an operation by members of the Iraqi national intelligence service along with US-led coalition forces, the Iraqi prime minister announced Friday.

“The Iraqis continue their impressive victories over the forces of darkness and terrorism,” Prime Minister Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement posted on X.

Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai, or “Abu Khadija,” was “deputy caliph” of the militant group and “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world,” the statement said.

On his Truth Social platform Friday night, US President Donald Trump said: “Today the fugitive leader of ISIS in Iraq was killed. He was relentlessly hunted down by our intrepid warfighters” in coordination with the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional government.

“PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!” Trump posted.

A security official said the operation was carried out by an airstrike in Anbar province, in western Iraq. A second official said the operation took place Thursday night but that al-Rifai’s death was confirmed Friday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The announcement came on the same day as the first visit by Syria’s top diplomat to Iraq, during which the two countries pledged to work together to combat IS.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fouad Hussein said at a news conference that “there are common challenges facing Syrian and Iraqi society, and especially the terrorists of IS.” He said the officials had spoken “in detail about the movements of ISIS, whether on the Syrian-Iraqi border, inside Syria or inside Iraq” during the visit.

Hussein referred to an operations room formed by Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon at a recent meeting in Amman to confront IS, and said it would soon begin work.

The relationship between Iraq and Syria is somewhat fraught after the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Al-Sudani came to power with the support of a coalition of Iran-backed factions, and Tehran was a major backer of Assad. The current interim president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani and fought as an al-Qaida militant in Iraq after the US invasion of 2003, and later fought against Assad’s government in Syria.

But Syrian interim Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani focused on the historic ties between the two countries.

“Throughout history, Baghdad and Damascus have been the capitals of the Arab and Islamic world, sharing knowledge, culture and economy,” he said.

Strengthening the partnership between the two countries “will not only benefit our peoples, but will also contribute to the stability of the region, making us less dependent on external powers and better able to determine our own destiny,” he said.

The operation and the visit come at a time when Iraqi officials are anxious about an IS resurgence in the wake of the fall of Assad in Syria.

While Syria’s new rulers – led by the Islamist former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – have pursued IS cells since taking power, some fear a breakdown in overall security that could allow the group to stage a resurgence.

The US and Iraq announced an agreement last year to wind down the military mission in Iraq of an American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group by September 2025, with US forces departing some bases where they have stationed troops during a two-decade-long military presence in the country.

When the agreement was reached to end the coalition’s mission in Iraq, Iraqi political leaders said the threat of IS was under control and they no longer needed Washington’s help to beat back the remaining cells.

But the fall of Assad in December led some to reassess that stance, including members of the Coordination Framework, a coalition of mainly Shiite, Iran-allied political parties that brought current Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani to power in late 2022.

Cuba’s power grid collapsed Friday night, triggering a nationwide power outage and plunging its more than 10 million people into darkness.

“At around 8:15 p.m. tonight, a failure at the Diezmero substation caused a significant loss of generation in the west of #Cuba and with it the failure of the National Electric System,” Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines said in a statement.

Efforts to restore service are underway, the ministry added.

It marks the latest in a series of failures on the Caribbean island struggling with creaking infrastructure, natural disasters and economic turmoil.

Cuban officials have previously blamed US economic sanctions, which increased under the previous administration of President Donald Trump, for further crippling an already ailing energy sector.

Critics also fault a lack of investment in infrastructure by the communist government.

For nearly a week in October, most of Cuba suffered near-total blackouts, the worst energy outages in decades.

Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot be allowed to “play games” over the US-backed ceasefire proposal in Ukraine, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer said ahead of a key summit of European leaders.

Starmer is hosting a meeting on Saturday of the “coalition of the willing,” a group of Western nations who have pledged to help defend Ukraine from Russian aggression in the face of dwindling and uncertain support from Washington.

After Kyiv this week accepted the terms of a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine – endorsed by US President Donald Trump – Moscow’s response was ambiguous, with Putin saying that “we agree with the proposal” but also that the deal “wasn’t complete.”

Ahead of Saturday’s virtual summit, Starmer accused Putin of “trying to delay” the ceasefire deal, saying that “the world needs to see action, not a study or empty words and pointless conditions.”

“We can’t allow President Putin to play games with President Trump’s deal. The Kremlin’s complete disregard for President Trump’s ceasefire proposal only serves to demonstrate that Putin is not serious about peace,” he said.

Starmer is expected to press European and NATO allies during Saturday’s talks to “ratchet up economic pressure on Russia” and “to force” Putin into negotiations, according to a Downing Street statement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to attend the meeting of the “coalition of the willing” – an umbrella term Starmer has used for countries that want to defend a deal in Ukraine and guarantee peace after three years of war.

The coalition spans 25 countries, including European nations, the EU Commission, NATO, Canada, Ukraine, Australia and New Zealand.

Starmer will call on allies to “be prepared to support a just and enduring peace in Ukraine over the long term and continue to ramp up our military support to Ukraine to defend themselves against increasing Russian attacks,” Downing Street said.

To achieve this, European nations must “be ready to monitor a ceasefire to ensure” peace lasts, Starmer said.

Although Europe has shown considerable unity amid the blows the Trump administration has dealt to the transatlantic alliance, significant divisions remain over whether individual European countries are willing to deploy troops to Ukraine to keep the peace.

Trump said Friday that he got “pretty good news” on a potential ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, without elaborating, and that his administration had “very good calls” with both countries earlier in the day.

In a separate post on Truth Social, Trump said “there is a very good chance that this horrible, bloody war can finally come to an end.”

He said in an interview taped Thursday that his administration would know a “little bit more on Monday” about the US-proposed temporary ceasefire.

Putin met with US special envoy Steve Witkoff on Thursday in Moscow – a visit that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said gave “reason to be cautiously optimistic.”

With Kyiv losing its grip on the western Russian region of Kursk, its sole territorial bargaining chip, many believe that Putin may be delaying talks on the ceasefire proposal until the region is firmly back under Russian control.

Meanwhile the aerial assaults continued.

Russia fired 178 drones and two ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing at least two people and injuring 44, according to Ukrainian officials. The two were killed in Kherson region, the head of its military administration said, after Russia targeted critical infrastructure and residential buildings, damaging seven high-rise buildings and 27 houses.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses had shot down 126 Ukrainian drones overnight, without saying how many drones bypassed its defenses.