Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkish forces have killed the chief of the Islamic State group throughout an operation in Syria
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish forces have killed the chief of the Islamic State group throughout an operation in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated late Sunday.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan informed TRT Turk tv in an interview that the IS chief, code-named Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi, was killed in a strike carried out on Saturday.
Erdogan stated the Turkish intelligence company, MIT, had been following him “for a long time.”
“We will continue our struggle against terrorist organizations without discriminating against any of them,” Erdogan stated in the interview.
A member of the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces’ navy police informed The Associated Press that the MIT clashed with IS militants on a farm in the village of Miska in Aleppo province late Friday evening. As the preventing intensified, Al-Qurayshi, who was hiding in a constructing on the farm, blew himself up. Investigators have been looking the hideout for proof and different data.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition conflict monitor added that Turkish drones flew over the realm, as Turkish-backed Syrian opposition teams closed off roads resulting in the realm the place the clashes passed off after Ankara put them on excessive alert.
There was no speedy affirmation from the IS group.
Turkey has carried out quite a few operations in opposition to IS and Kurdish teams alongside the Syrian border, capturing or killing suspected militants. The nation controls massive swaths of territory in northern Syria following a collection of land incursions to drive Kurdish teams away from the Turkish-Syrian border.
Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi was named chief of the militant group after its earlier chief was killed in October, with an IS spokesman calling him “one of the veteran warriors and one of the loyal sons of the Islamic State.”
He took over management of IS at a time when the extremist group has misplaced management of the territory it as soon as held in Iraq and Syria. However, he had been attempting to rise once more, with sleeper cells finishing up lethal assaults in each nations.
Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hunted down by U.S. forces in a raid in northwest Syria in October 2019. His successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was killed in the same raid in February 2022. He was adopted by Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who in response to the U.S. navy was killed in mid-October in an operation by Syrian rebels in Syria’s southern province of Daraa.
None of the al-Qurayshis are believed to be associated. Al-Qurayshi isn’t their actual identify however comes from Quraish, the identify of the tribe to which Islam’s Prophet Muhammad belonged. IS claims its leaders hail from this tribe and “al-Qurayshi” serves as a part of an IS chief’s nom de guerre.
The Islamic State group broke away from al-Qaida a couple of decade in the past and ended up controlling massive components of northern and jap Syria in addition to northern and western Iraq. In 2014, the extremists declared their so-called caliphate, attracting supporters from all over the world.
In the next years, they claimed assaults all through the world that killed and wounded a whole bunch of individuals earlier than coming below assault from totally different sides. In March 2019, U.S.-backed Syrian fighters captured the final sliver of land the extremists as soon as held in Syria’s jap province of Deir el-Zour that borders Iraq. ——
Sewell reported from Beirut.
