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A top ISIS official has been killed in a joint raid in Yemen by Saudi-led coalition special forces and a Yemeni counterterrorism unit.

Getting into it: According to Yemen’s Central State Security Agency, the operation ran at dawn on Sept. 1, carried out by coalition special forces with ground support from the 22nd Brigade of Yemen’s counterterrorism forces, known as Force 22. Officials said the raid came out of months of intelligence the Yemeni agency and coalition command had been trading back and forth, and that the goal was to take Abu Hudhayfah al-Ansari alive. He was killed during the clash.

The agency said al-Ansari was hiding in a residential building with eight civilians, including five children and two women, who were moved out and kept safe before the shooting started. One other person at the scene resisted and was taken into custody. Forensic teams recovered a suicide vest and destroyed it on site. Investigators are now working through two laptops, five phones and two tablets pulled from the building.

Al-Ansari had been ISIS’s official spokesperson since August 2023, when he announced in an audio recording that the group’s then-leader, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi, was dead and that Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi had replaced him. He fronted the group’s propaganda from then on, appearing in a string of recordings, including one in January 2024 and another in February of this year that went after Syria’s government and told ISIS fighters to ramp up attacks.

The Central State Security Agency praised the precision of the raid given how densely populated the area was, said Yemen will not be a sanctuary for extremists, and pledged continued cooperation with international partners.

This all comes as Yemen’s internationally recognized government attempts to reassert itself in the areas it still holds, more than a decade into a war with the Houthis that has left a security vacuum that both ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula continue to operate in.