The Islamic State terrorist group (IS, formerly IS) has lost another leader, multiple media outlets reported on Wednesday. Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi passed away “in battle,” The organization is making a statement, in a statement picked up by Reuters, AFP and regional agencies.
According to IS, al-Hasan killed a number of “enemy” before dying “on the battlefield,” but it does not provide details on when or where the incident happened and its account cannot be independently verified.
The new leader of IS has been identified as Abu Hussein al-Hussaini al-Qurashi.
Al-Hasan is the third self-proclaimed “calipers” of IS. He took over earlier this year, after his predecessor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was killed in a US special forces raid in February. The raid took place in Syria’s Idlib province, which is under the control of anti-government terrorists either by Türkiye or by Western governments.
In September, Turkish authorities announced the arrest of a senior IS leader named Abu Zeyd, who was thought to have been a possible successor to Abu Ibrahim at one point.
IS was declared in 2013 by an Iraqi salafist who called himself Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Under his command, the terrorist group conquered much of the Middle East, exploiting the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the foreign-backed uprising against the Syrian government.
The US and its allies launched an air campaign against IS in 2014, while the Iraqi army and Kurdish militia found the group on the ground. Damascus squeezes it from the west, with the support of Russia and Iran. The group officially lost control of the territory in March 2019, while Al-Baghdadi committed suicide when US special forces raided his Idlib compound in October 2019.
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