Islamic State says its chief was killed by militants in Syria, names his successor

BEIRUT — The Islamic State group introduced on Thursday the demise in Syria of its little-known chief, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurayshi, who headed the extremist group since November, and named his successor.

The group didn’t say when al-Qurayshi was killed however added that he died in combating with an al-Qaida-linked group. IS spokesman Abu Huthaifa al-Ansari stated that Abu Hafs al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi was named because the group’s new chief.

Al-Qurayshi was the fourth IS chief to be killed because the group was based by Iraqi militant Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and declared a caliphate in giant elements of Syria and Iraq in June 2014 earlier than its defeat years later.

The spokesman, al-Ansari, stated in an audio message that al-Qurayshi “was martyred” in rebel-held northwestern Syria by members of Syria’s al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham once they tried to detain him within the province of Idlib.

“He fought them until he succumbed to his wounds,” al-Ansari stated of al-Qurayshi, including that the al-Qaida-linked group detained some IS members who have been with the late chief, together with Abu Omar al-Muhajir, one other spokesman, and that they’re nonetheless being held.

In April, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated Turkish intelligence brokers had killed al-Qurayshi in northern Syria – an announcement that IS denied.

The Islamic State group broke away from al-Qaida a decade in the past and attracted supporters from all over the world. Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, IS militants nonetheless perform lethal assaults in each nations and elsewhere.

An Afghan department of IS has claimed duty for a suicide bombing on Sunday in Pakistan at a pro-Taliban get together’s election rally, in one of many worst assaults in Pakistan in recent times. The demise toll from that assault has climbed to 63.

IS founder al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid by Americans troops in northwestern Syria in October 2019. The group’s chief after that, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was additionally killed in a U.S. raid in February 2022, in northwestern Syria. His successor was killed in southern Syria later that 12 months.