Aymenn Jawad Tamimi, an expert on jihadist groups, said Adnani’s death “is significant symbolically and in pointing to the wider decline of the Islamic State”. Both statements were released late Tuesday evening. His death marks the highest-profile killing yet of an ISIS member.
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The Islamic State group says its spokesman has been “martyred” in northern Syria.
“It’s a joke” another defense official said bluntly.
Those military setbacks have been accompanied by air strikes that have killed several of the group’s leaders, undermining its organisational ability and dampening its morale.
United States officials also say he was among the first foreign combatants to fight the existence of US-led forces in Iraq. It said a generation raised in IS-held territory would avenge al-Adnani’s death. “We stand by the statement we made yesterday”.
“We are still assessing the results of the operation at this time”.
The use of the term “would seem to suggest ISIS may have been preparing him to be Baghdadi’s successor as overall leader”, Lister said.
The Obama administration is not aware of any facts suggesting Russian Federation was involved in the death of prominent Islamic State leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, a White House spokesman said on Wednesday.
A Syrian national born Taha Sobhi Falaha, al-Adnani was a core member of ISIS, considered by some as second only to leader Abu Bakir al-Baghdadi.
Meanwhile, Islamic State supporters took to various forms of social media to lament the news and call for revenge attacks.
According to the reports, the United States had targeted the prominent Senior ISIS leader in a precision strike near the town of Al Bab and was still assessing the results.
Al-Adnani, whose real name is Taha Sobhi Falaha, persistently called for attacks against the West, which paid off in bloody notoriety with the November 13 coordinated attacks in Paris that hit a concert hall, a stadium and restaurants and bars, leaving 130 people dead and hundreds wounded.
As Islamic State’s group spokesman, Adnani was its most visible member.
“He wasn’t just the spokesman”, Stewart said.
Adnani was well-known for ordering operatives to attack countries participating in the coalition against ISIS. He oversaw the group’s external operations division, responsible for recruiting operatives around the world and instigating or organizing them to carry out attacks that have included Paris, Brussels and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
There were conflicting reports earlier on Tuesday as to where and how Adnani died.
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The US Justice Department had offered a bounty of up to $7 million for information leading to Qaduli, identified as the group’s finance minister and a key figure behind some foreign plots.
