By Spy Uganda Correspondent
The ISIS leader has been killed by Turkish intelligence services during an operation in Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.
Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi, who is said to have taken over the group after his predecessor was killed last autumn, was killed in a strike on Saturday.
During an interview with Turkish broadcaster TRT, Mr Erdogan said Turkey had been following the suspected leader “for a long time” until he was “neutralised” over the weekend.
The Turkish president added: “We will continue our struggle against terrorist organisations without discriminating against any of them.”
Turkey has conducted numerous operations against ISIS 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 after its previous chief was killed in October, 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 the extremist group has lost control of the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria.
However, he had been trying to rise again, with sleeper cells carrying out deadly attacks in both countries.
Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hunted down by US forces in a raid in northwest Syria in October 2019. His successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was killed in a similar raid in February 2022.
He was followed by 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 province of Daraa.
The Islamic State group broke away from al-Qaida about a decade ago and ended up controlling large parts of northern and eastern Syria as well as northern and western Iraq.
In 2014, the extremists declared their so-called caliphate, attracting supporters from around the world.
In the following years, they claimed attacks throughout the world that killed and wounded hundreds of people before coming under attack from different sides.
In March 2019, US-backed Syrian fighters captured the last sliver of land the extremists once held in Syria’s eastern province of Deir el-Zour which borders Iraq.
Earlier this year, we reported that a British-born terrorist who tried to join ISIS and whose nephew planned to kill US airmen in the UK was released from prison after just four years.
Shazib Khan was sentenced to eight years in jail in 2016, aged 23, and was described by a judge at the time as “absolutely committed to the Jihadi creed”.
Justice Edis said at Kingston Crown Court, in southwest London, Shazib frequently expressed a desire for martyrdom and had no doubt he fully intended to do harm.
He added that the defendant was more of a threat than his nephew Junead Khan, who had plotted to stab US servicemen outside an airbase.
He was sentenced to life but this was eventually reduced at the Court of Appeal to 20 years inside with five on licence.
Shazib Khan also saw his sentence cut to seven years and he became eligible for parole in 2020.
It has since emerged that the now 29-year-old was released in October of that year.
