Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri in 2002. News of his death has been announced several times over the years. Credit Jassim Mohammed/Associated Press
BAGHDAD — An Iraqi provincial governor said Friday that militiamen had killed Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the highest-ranking official from Saddam Hussein’s regime who was still on the loose, in clashes in a mountainous region of northern Iraq.
News of Mr. Douri’s death has been announced several times by different authorities over the years, and officials cautioned that confirmation would not come until DNA testing had been conducted
The announcement was made by the governor of Salahuddin Province. Its capital is Tikrit, Mr. Hussein’s hometown, which was recently liberated from the Islamic State. A representative for one of the militias involved in the fighting on Friday, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, said a body that fighters believed was Mr. Douri’s was on its way to Baghdad Friday evening for DNA testing.
The elusive Mr. Douri, who in recent years has led a Sunni insurgent group that last year aligned with the Islamic State as it took over Mosul, was once declared dead, in 2005, by his own Baath Party. Mr. Douri’s insurgent group is made up of former intelligence officers and elite soldiers from the old Baathist regime, and is called the Men of the Army of the Naqshbandia Order, often called J.R.T.N., the group’s initials in Arabic.
The group’s role was said to be important in helping the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, seize territory last year. But Men of the Army is believed to have been marginalized as ISIS consolidated power through its sheer brutality.
Mr. Douri would have been in his early 70s, and was a former interior minister under Mr. Hussein. He was the king of clubs in the deck of cards that was issued to American soldiers in 2003 and carried the faces of the top regime leaders being sought by American-led military forces.
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