ISIS reveals its most recent leader has been killed ‘in combat with enemies of God’
- Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi has only been leader of ISIS since March
- He was killed in combat and his replacement has already been named
- ISIS has been defeated in Iraq and Syria but sleeper cells still carry out attacks
The leader of ISIS has been killed in battle just eight months after he was named as caliph of the Islamist terror group.
Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, from Iraq, was killed ‘in combat with enemies of God’ and a replacement has already been announced.
Speaking in an audio message, the spokesman identified the group’s new leader as Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi.
Qurashi refers to a tribe of the Prophet Mohammed, from whom ISIS leaders must claim descent.
ISIS enjoyed a meteoric rise in Iraq and Syria in 2014 that saw it conquer vast swathes of territory
The spokesman did not provide details on the new leader, but said he was a ‘veteran’ jihadist and called on all groups loyal to IS to pledge their allegiance.
Little else is known of the leader who is taking control of the beleaguered terror group whose influence over the Middle East has waned in recent years.
After a meteoric rise in Iraq and Syria in 2014 that saw it conquer vast swathes of territory, ISIS saw its self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ collapse under a wave of offensives.
It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but sleeper cells of the Sunni Muslim extremist group still carry out attacks in both countries and claim attacks elsewhere in the world.
ISIS’s previous leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, was killed earlier this year in a US raid in Idlib province in northern Syria.
ISIS’s previous leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi (pictured left), was killed earlier this year after taking over from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (right)
He had led ISIS from 2019 and was an ethnic Turkmen from the Iraqi city of Tal Afar.
The terror leader blew himself up in early February during a US raid in northwest Syria, according to Washington, in an area controlled by rival jihadists.
His predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed, also in Idlib in a US raid, in October 2019.
New leader Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi comes to the helm as ISIS has been weakened by US-backed operations in Iraq and Syria aiming to thwart a jihadist resurgence.
The remnants of ISIS in Syria mostly went to their desert hideouts from which they continue to harass Kurdish-led forces and Syrian government troops.
A UN report last year estimated that around 10,000 IS fighters remained active across Iraq and Syria.
Hassan Hassan, who authored a book on ISIS, said one ‘unprecedented’ but possible scenario was that the Hashimi ‘was killed ‘accidentally’ during a raid or fighting without him being known to whoever killed him’.
In October this year, US forces killed a ‘senior’ ISIS member in a pre-dawn raid in northeastern Syria, the US military’s Central Command said at the time.
It said a later air strike had killed two other senior ISIS members.
The US leads a military coalition battling ISIS in Syria.
In July, the Pentagon said it had killed Syria’s top ISIS jihadist in a drone strike in the north of the country.
US Central Command said he had been ‘one of the top five’ ISIS leaders.
Turkey in September said security forces had arrested a ‘senior executive’ of ISIS known as Abu Zeyd, whose real name was Bashar Khattab Ghazal al-Sumaidai.
Turkish media said there were some indications Sumaidai might have been the ISIS leader.
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