TURKEY: Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that his armed forces have killed the chief of the Islamic State in Syria.
Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi led the IS after his predecessor Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi was killed last autumn.
Erdogan told broadcaster TRT Turk that the IS leader was “neutralised” during a Turkish MIT intelligence agency operation. IS has so far not commented on the reported operation. The BBC said it could not verify President Erdogan’s claim independently.
Erdogan said the MIT intelligence agency had followed Qurayshi for a “long time.” He said, “We’ll continue our struggle with terrorist organisations without any discrimination,” and provided no further details.
Syrian sources quoted by Reuters said the operation occurred in the northern town of Jandaris, close to the Turkish border.
Last November, the group announced the death Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi. The United States said he was killed in the rebel Free Syrian Army operation in southwest Syria in mid-October 2022.
Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi took over the group after Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi set off the blast killing himself and his family as United States special armed forces rounded on his hideout after a gunfight in February 2022.
The IS once held 88,000sq km of territory stretching from north-eastern Syria across Iraq and imposed its cruel rule on almost eight million citizens.
The IS was driven from its last piece of territory in 2019, but the United Nations warned in July that it remained a persistent threat.
It is estimated that between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq are based primarily in rural places and continue to carry out hit-and-run attacks, ambushes and roadside bombings.
IS regional affiliates also threaten other conflict zones worldwide, including Afghanistan.
The UN said IS’s most substantial and well-established networks were in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Lake Chad basin.
