He weighed "several hundred pounds". The cops couldn't get him into a car. And netizens joked that his hideout must have been a bakery.

That's how an Iraqi SWAT team found the top Islamic State (IS) leader Shifa al-Nima during a Thursday raid n Mosul, Iraq, according to a report by Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper.

"A man who sanctioned enslavement, rape, ethnic cleansing and mass murder..." - British activist Maajid Nawaz on Shifa al-Nima

Founded in 2013, the IS terrorist group -- often known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) -- remains a major global threat despite the killing of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a US raid last year.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javed Zarif said in a recent interview with India Today TV said IS was shifting its base to Afghanistan from Iraq and Syria, and warned of a "source of common concern" for Iran, Iran and Pakistan. Three suspected terrorists, one of them with IS links, were arrested in Delhi last week.

'PSYCHOLOGICAL BLOW'

Shifa al-Nima, the IS preacher captured Thursday, provided religious justification for enslavement, rape, torture and ethnic cleansing, said British activist Maajid Nawaz.

Iraqi police said al-Nima "is considered one of the foremost leaders of [IS] and was responsible for issuing fatwas that led to the murder of scholars and clerics", The Jerusalem Post reported.

The image of the overweight man being taken into custody by Iraqi forces is a "psychological blow" to IS, Nawaz said.

"Today was a good day for the force and a bad day for evil," he said.