NEW DELHI: A Keralite who went missing last year and joined the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) has been killed in an operation by Afghan-US forces in Afghanistan, a senior central intelligence official said. The dead has been identified as Saifudeen, a native of Malappuram.

Security agencies have been able to track 98 cases of men, women and children from Kerala joining ISIS. 38 of them had died by June this year. Malappuram is one of the districts where more number of Keralites from Kerala have joined the extremist group ISIS. Saifudeen is the second resident from Kerala to have been killed fighting for the ISIS in Afghanistan over the last fortnight.

Muhammed Muhasin was the first and also a native of Edappal in Malappuram killed in Afghanistan. The death news was informed via a whatsapp message. He was killed in a drone attack by America. The message was sent to his family from an unidentified number. The message in Malayalam received along with Muhasin’s photo said, “He has become a martyr. He was martyred in the path of Allah in an American drone attack in Afghanistan.”

Saifudeen had turned to extreme Salafism when he was still completing his studies. His interest in the Salafi ideology deepened after 2014 when he migrated to Saudi Arabia to get himself a job. He found one in the Saudi kingdom’s port city of Jisan and also kept attending Salafi religious classes at different centres, a security official said.

Saifudeen abruptly headed back home in September 2018. He spent 10 days at home in Malappuram’s Pookiparambu. Then, Saifudeen had got himself a visa to travel to Dubai and quietly left home.

Saifudeen did occasionally kept in touch with his family mobile messaging services. But he never really told them where he was, or the job that he had picked up. The closest that he came to giving any information about what he was doing was in April this year when he told his sister that he was in the UAE to learn more about religion.