The death of leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi has been confirmed by ISIL. Abu Hasan al-Hashemi al-Qurashi will be the replacement.
All soldiers have “swore allegiance” to Abu Hasan al-Hashemi al-Qurashi, the spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) said in an audio recording posted on social media on March 10.
“Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi and the official spokesman of the Islamic State Abu Hamza al-Qurashi have been murdered in recent days,” said new spokesman Abu-Omar al-Muhajjir.
Little is known about the new leader of the terrorist group. The information comes more than a month after old leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi was raided by US special forces in his house in Idlib, northwestern Syria on February 3.
According to the White House and US defense officials, he died by suicide with a bomb to avoid arrest.
The death of Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi was the biggest loss to ISIL since Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIL’s founder (the caliph of the Islamic State), was killed in a US raid in Idlib in 2019.
ISIL, which has lost much of the territory it once controlled in Syria and Iraq, failed to regain any of the courage it had during its peak in mid-2014 when Baghdadi proclaimed himself king of the Muslim world.
Since the Russian and American forces entered the war, ISIL lost its last stronghold in the desert region of eastern Syria in March 2019.
The remnants of ISIL have retreated into the desert, occasionally conducting raids against Kurdish forces and the Syrian government. Most of the attacks were small-scale, targeting military targets and oil and gas facilities in remote areas.
However, many people are still concerned about the risk of ISIL resurgence.
