Terrorist Mahdi Dinqu, aka “Abu Barakat.”
On September 7, the Libyan National Army (LNA) announced that notorious ISIS leader Mahdi Dinqu was eliminated in the southwestern Libyan town of Murzuq.
Major General Khaled Mahgoub, a spokesman for the army, said that Dinqu was hunted down by a special operations force of the Tariq ibn Ziyad Brigade.
The terrorist was moving through a local market in Murzuq in a pickup loaded with fuel when he was ambushed by LNA special operatives. Dinqu was shot and killed on the spot, while three of his comrades were arrested. The terrorists were identified as Othman Nour Mohamad, Ghadeer Muammar and Hossam Halima from Algeria and Muaz al-Sheikh from Sudan.
Dinqu, who is also known as Abu Barakat, worked under the command of ISIS founder and leader Abu Baker al-Baghdadi in the western Iraqi city of Mosul for a while before returning to Libya to spread the terrorist group’s influence. After escaping the coastal Libyan town of Sirte in 2016, Dinqu led ISIS remnants in the Libyan desert under the banner of Jaysh al-Sahara [the Desert Army].
The terrorist was reportedly the mastermind behind of some of ISIS most brutal attacks in Libya, including the 2015 kidnapping and beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts in Libya.
The LNA has been combating ISIS since it first emerged in Libya in 2014. Over the past six years, ISIS was expelled from the country’s northern and central regions. Currently, the terrorist group is active in the southern region, mainly near the border with Niger and Chad.
The elimination of Dinqu was a major blow to ISIS remnants in Libya, who are already struggling with command-and-control issues.
