Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that the leader of the so-called Islamic State has been killed, according to reports.
Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi was “neutralised” in an operation carried out by Turkish forces in northern Syria earlier this weekend, the Turkish government reportedly announced late on Sunday night.
The operation is understood to have taken place earlier this weekend in the town of Jindires, which is located close to Syria’s border with Turkey.
Earlier reports had indicated that a senior leader of Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh, had blown himself up after finding himself cornered.
Mr Erdogan is quotes by BNO News, as saying: “MIT (the National Intelligence Organization) has been tracking the so-called leader of Daesh, Abu Hussein al-Qurashi, for a long time. This person was neutralized in Syria yesterday.”
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Al-Qurashi succeeded Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi in November 2022 after the Islamic State announced that he’d been killed “in combat”.
The founder of the terror group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed by the US military in 2019.
The US conducted a helicopter raid in northern Syria earlier in April that resulted in the deaths of at least three Islamic State fighters.
One of those killed was understood to be a senior leader.
The attack was prompted by intelligence about a plan to kidnap government officials overseas.
ISIS occupied approximately a third of Syria and Iraq at the height of its powers in 2014, triggering a major humanitarian crisis.
The group was responsible for, either directly or indirectly, a number of terrorist attacks across the globe but it’s so-called caliphate has almost completely disappeared today.
It now occupies only small sections of land.
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