The Islamic State (IS) group’s battle-tested equivalent of a defense minister is believed to have been killed in a US airstrike in northeastern Syria, a US official said on Tuesday.
The target of the attack on Friday last week was Omar al-Shishani, a red-bearded Georgian fighting with the militant group in Syria, the Pentagon said, adding that results of the operation were still being assessed.
A US official speaking on condition of anonymity later said that al-Shishani “likely died” in the assault by waves of US warplanes and drones, along with 12 other Islamic State fighters.
Al-Shishani is the nom de guerre of Tarkhan Batirashvili, who ranked among the most wanted under a US program, with a US$5 million bounty on his head.
The US stopped short of declaring al-Shishani dead.
The lack of a US presence on the ground makes it difficult to assess the success of operations targeting militants in Syria, and al-Shishani’s death has been falsely reported several times.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook described al-Shishani as “a battle-tested leader with experience who had led ISIL fighters in numerous engagements in Iraq and Syria,” using an acronym for the Islamic State.
His death, if confirmed, would hinder the Islamic State’s foreign recruitment efforts, especially from Chechnya and the Caucasus regions, and its attempts to defend its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, the Pentagon said.
The US Department of the Treasury designated him a foreign terrorist fighter in 2014 and said he maintained “unique authority” within the Islamic State.
The Georgian was “the ISIL equivalent of the secretary of defense,” the US official said.
In the recent assault, waves of US aircraft struck near al-Shadadi, a town in northeastern Syria that was retaken from the Islamic State last month by local fighters allied with the US-led coalition.
The US official said it was “unusual and noteworthy” that al-Shishani had traveled from the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital of Raqa to al-Shadadi.
“This was likely to bolster the sagging morale of ISIL fighters there, who have suffered a series of defeats by Syrian Democratic Forces,” the official said, alluding to one of the local, US-allied fighting groups.
Al-Shishani comes from a town in Georgia that is populated mainly by ethnic Chechens, the official said.
He fought as a Chechen rebel against Russian forces before joining the Georgian military in 2006 and fought Russian forces again in Georgia in 2008.
After being discharged from the Georgian military on health grounds, he entered Syria in 2012 and joined the Islamic State the next year.
Among his feats on his way to the top ranks of Islamic State military operations, al-Shishani turned one rebel group into an effective fighting force to take on the Syrian army by “mixing Syrians who knew the terrain with the Chechens’ fighting ability,” the US official said.
Al-Shishani is believed to have led a prison in Tabqa near Raqa where foreign hostages might have been held.
He later took command of the Islamic State military operations in northern Syria, the US official said.
Many foreign Islamic State fighters hail from the former Soviet republics — in almost equal numbers as those who come from western European nations — according to the US-based intelligence consultancy the Soufan Group.
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