Senior commander of self-proclaimed Islamic State Omar al-Shishani has been “clinically dead” for several days following a USA air strike in northern Syria, according to a monitoring group.
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The official branded Shishani “the ISIL equivalent of the secretary of defence”, using another acronym for the group.
Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen and described by the Pentagon as the group’s “minister of war”, was targeted near the town of al-Shadadi in Syria, US officials told Reuters last week.
Rahman had then said Shishani was seriously injured but had not died.
He was an ethnic Chechen from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.
Shaddadi was recently taken from ISIS by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that includes a large number of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG).
He later served time in prison for possessing illegal weapons before becoming one of hundreds of Chechens to join the jihad in Syria.
“His potential removal from the battlefield would negatively impact ISIL’s ability to recruit foreign fighters – especially those from Chechnya and the Caucus regions – and degrade ISIL’s ability to coordinate attacks and defense of its strongholds like Raqqah, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq”, Cook said.
They said he was killed along with 12 other Isis fights at a “shura” or meeting with other officials.
Mr. Shishani was born in northern Georgia to a Christian father and Muslim mother, and his real name was Tarkhan Batirasihvili. He was discharged from the Georgian army in 2010 for medical reasons, the defense official said, and in 2012 left Georgia for Istanbul, Turkey.
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And it was Shishani who led successful ISIS military campaigns throughout Syria as well as a blitz through western Iraq that put the group within 100 miles of Baghdad.
