Daesh confirms death of its leader, names successor

ATLANTA (Pajhwok): Daesh or Islamic State (IS) group has confirmed the death of its leader, Abu Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi, and named his replacement, according to media reports.

In April, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkish intelligence forces had killed the leader in Syria, Al-Jazeera reported.

“The suspected leader of Daesh, codename Abu Hussein al-Qurashi, has been neutralised in an operation carried out… by the MIT [National Intelligence Organisation] in Syria,” Erdogan said at the time, using the Arabic s for ISIL.

The death of the Daesh leader was confirmed by a spokesman of the group in Telegram on Thursday.

The group said on Thursday that its leader had been killed in “direct clashes” with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group in Idlib province in rebel-held northwestern Syria, the source added.

The spokesperson said the group’s new leader will be Abu Hafs al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi.

Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi is the group’s fifth leader since its inception.

The group’s first leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed, also in Idlib, in October 2019.

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