Turkish forces have killed the leader of the Islamic State (IS) group during an operation in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late on Sunday.
Erdogan told TRT Turk television in an interview that the IS leader, code-named Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi, was killed in a strike on Saturday.
The Turkish National Intelligence Organization had been following him “for a long time,” the president said.
Photo: AFP
“We will continue our struggle against terrorist organizations without discriminating against any of them,” Erdogan said.
There was no immediate confirmation from the IS.
Turkey has conducted numerous operations against IS and Kurdish groups along the Syrian border, capturing or killing suspected militants.
The country controls large swaths of territory in northern Syria following a series of land incursions to drive Kurdish groups away from the Turkish-Syrian border.
Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi was named leader of the militant group in October last year, with an IS spokesman calling him “one of the veteran warriors and one of the loyal sons of the Islamic State.”
He took over leadership of IS at a time when its has lost control of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria.
However, he had been pushing the extremist group’s rise, with sleeper cells carrying out deadly attacks in both countries.
His predecessor was Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who according to the US military was killed in mid-October in an operation by Syrian rebels in Syria’s southern Daraa Governorate.
None of the al-Qurayshis are believed to be related. Al-Qurayshi is not their real name, but comes from Quraish, the name of the tribe to which Islam’s Prophet Mohammed belonged.
IS claims its leaders hail from this tribe.
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