The chief strategist of the Islamic State group, whose calls for attacks against the West during Ramadan led to mass bloodshed, has been killed in Syria, IS-affiliated media say.
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As Islamic State’s spokesman, Adnani was its most visible member.
The extremist group has suffered a string of defeats in recent weeks, including in Syria’s northern Aleppo province, where Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels drove the Islamic State out of the border town of Jarablus last week.
Islamic State has released several audio files online in which Adnani, a senior leader in the group, delivers sermons urging followers to carry out attacks.
The United States military is expected to claim credit for killing one of the Islamic State’s founding leaders after ISIS announced the death of Abu Mohammed Al-Adnani.
Born Taha Sobhi Falaha in the late 1970s, al-Adnani was a suspect in al-Qaeda’s December 2000 plot to bomb a Christmas market in France. Islamic State published a eulogy dated August 29 but giving no further details.
Born in the countryside of the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, al-Adnani was also among the first group of foreign fighters against USA invasion in Iraq in 2003. He crossed the border and joined al-Qaida in Iraq, a precursor to IS, after the 2003 US -led invasion.
A senior Syrian rebel official said Adnani was most probably killed in the Islamic State-held city of al-Bab in an air strike.
In June 2014, he formally declared the establishment of the IS caliphate stretching across parts of Syria and Iraq under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, demanding allegiance from Muslims worldwide.
A government official in Washington told VOA that the US been tracking several “high value” IS members in Aleppo province, but would not confirm whether Adnani was one of those on the list.
Earlier this year, he called for massive attacks during Ramadan – a call that translated into the bloodiest Muslim holy month in recent memory.
The Guardian reports that in January, Iraq said that Adnani had been wounded in an airstrike in the western province of Anbar and then moved to the northern city of Mosul, the group’s capital in Iraq. He said US officials are “still assessing the results of the operation”.
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The group reacted by saying his death would not harm it, and his killers would face “torment”, a statement in the group’s al-Naba newspaper said, according to the Site Intelligence monitoring group.
