According to the terrorist organization, Abu al-Hasan died “in fighting.”
Multiple media sites reported on Wednesday that the terrorist organization known as Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS), has lost another commander.
The group claims in a statement that Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi passed away “in warfare,” and it was picked up by Reuters, AFP, and local media.
IS claimed that al-Hasan killed several “enemies” before passing away “on the battlefield,” however it provided no information on the occasion or location of the incident, making it impossible to independently confirm the claim.
Abu Hussein al-Hussaini al-Qurashi has been identified as the new head of the IS.
Al-Hasan was the third IS leader to declare himself “caliph.”
After his predecessor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was murdered in a US special forces assault in February, he assumed leadership earlier this year. The raid occurred in the Syrian province of Idlib, which is run by terrorist anti-government rebels supported by the Turkish or Western governments.
The detention of Abu Zeyd, a prominent IS leader who was formerly thought to be Abu Ibrahim’s potential successor, was reported by Turkish officials in September.
IS was established in 2013 by Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, a violent salafist from Iraq. He oversaw the terrorist organization’s conquest of a sizable chunk of the Middle East, taking advantage of the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the foreign-backed uprising against the Syrian government.
In 2014, the US and its allies began an airstrike against IS as the Iraqi military and Kurdish militias tracked the organization down on the ground. Damascus pushed it from the west with help from Russia and Iran. When US special forces conducted an assault on Al-Idlib Baghdadi’s compound in October 2019, he had already formally abandoned any claim to any form of territorial authority by March 2019.
