Islamic State Confirms Top Leader Is Dead
This is the third top leader of the extremist group to be killed in less than two years A member of the Turkish-backed military police stood guard in May outside a house reportedly used by Abu al-Husayn al-Qurayshi in northwestern Syria. Photo: Bakr Alkasem/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images By Jared Malsin Aug. 3, 2023 2:57 pm ET ISTANBUL—Islamic State confirmed on Thursday that its little-known top leader had been killed, the third time in less than two years that the extremist group’s senior leader had met that fate. In an audio statement attributed to its spokesman, the group said its previous leader, code-named Abu al-Husayn al-Qurayshi, had been killed in clashes with a rival militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls part of northwestern Syria. The statement comes
A member of the Turkish-backed military police stood guard in May outside a house reportedly used by Abu al-Husayn al-Qurayshi in northwestern Syria.
Photo: Bakr Alkasem/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
ISTANBUL—Islamic State confirmed on Thursday that its little-known top leader had been killed, the third time in less than two years that the extremist group’s senior leader had met that fate.
In an audio statement attributed to its spokesman, the group said its previous leader, code-named Abu al-Husayn al-Qurayshi, had been killed in clashes with a rival militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls part of northwestern Syria.
The statement comes months after Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the same Islamic State leader had been killed in a Turkish intelligence operation in northern Syria.
The group named a new leader, Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. The group’s most recent top commander made no public statements during his time in charge of the group, according to extremism experts.
Islamic State seized control of huge swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014, imposing brutal religious rule on millions of people and launching a global campaign of violent attacks on civilians.
The group lost control of its last piece of territory in Syria in 2019 after years of overwhelming military operations by Iraqi and Syrian forces backed by U.S. air power.
The organization has persisted as an underground militant group that is still capable of lethal violence. In early 2022, its militants carried out a prison break in eastern Syria that resulted in days of street-to-street fighting with U.S.-backed Syrian forces. Some 500 people died in the violence.
Islamic State has been unable to recapture its former momentum in Syria and Iraq, but also operates branches in Afghanistan and parts of Africa.
The group remains under pressure from a U.S.-led coalition of Syrian and Iraqi forces. In July the U.S. military said it killed an Islamic State leader in an airstrike in Syria.
The group’s previous senior leader was killed by Syrian fighters in 2022 in an operation that didn’t involve the U.S. Another was killed in early 2022 during a U.S. commando raid.
Write to Jared Malsin at [email protected]
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