Over 200 IS fighters killed in 2022: Iraqi army

Over 200 Islamic State group fighters have been killed in military operations, drone strikes and targeted assassinations throughout 2022, according to the Iraqi army. 

Among the ranks of dead IS members were two of the group’s leaders - Abu Ibrahim al-Quraishi, and Abu Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi.

Both "caliphs", in position for a matter of months, detonated suicide bombs after finding themselves surrounded during gunfights seeking out their arrest.

"Over 200 terrorists have been killed through aerial attacks, with most of them being ISIS leaders," said Major General Tahsin al-Khalafi, spokesperson for the joint operations command. 

Despite losing 200 fighters, IS have been maintaining their own sting operations throughout the year, attacking innocent civilians and army positions. 

The provinces of Kirkuk and Diyala have been particularly badly hit. 

In early December, eight Iraqi civilians were killed and others wounded after Islamic State group militants launched an attack on a village in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province. 

"A group of terrorists riding motorcycles at around 8:30 pm attacked  Al-Bubali village... dozens of residents, some of them unarmed, had rushed to confront the attackers," said the local mayor. 

Iraqi army officials argued throughout the year that stings by IS militants were often retaliations for military operations which "have broken the terrorists' backbone and killed their leader".

IS announced on 30 November that its leader, Abu Hasan al-Hashimi Al-Qurashi, was killed in battle with the Free Syrian Army in Daraa province in Northern Syria. The group also identified its new leader as Abu al-Hussein Al-Husseini Al-Qurashi.

After a meteoric rise in Iraq and Syria in 2014 that saw it conquer vast swathes of territory, IS saw its self-proclaimed "caliphate" collapse under a wave of offensives.

It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but sleeper cells of the extremist group still carry out attacks in both countries.