'Islamic State' group announces death of its leader
August 3, 2023
The leader of the so-called "Islamic State" group, Abu Hussein al-Qurashi, was killed during clashes in Syria's Idlib province, the terror group said in an undated audio recording published on Telegram on Thursday.
He reportedly died in "direct clashes" with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist group with links to al-Qaeda.
"He fought them until he succumbed to his wounds," IS spokesperson Abu Huthaifa al-Ansari said in the audio message.
The group did not say when exactly al-Qurashi was killed.
News of al-Qurashi's death first circulated several months ago, when Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkish intelligence forces had killed al-Qurashi in Syria.
New leader named
IS named Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi as its leader.
He is the fifth person to head the terrorist group since it declared an Islamic caliphate across large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The group's first self-styled "caliph," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed himself during a US operation in Idlib in 2019.
The two subsequent IS leaders, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi and Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, were killed in February and November 2022, respectively.
zc/msh (AFP, Reuters. AP)