In Washington, the Pentagon said US-led coalition forces targeted Adnani in an air strike in Syria’s Aleppo province on Tuesday but did not immediately confirm his death.
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Islamic State group spokesman and top strategist Abu Mohamed al-Adnani has been killed in Syria, the group said, with both Washington and Moscow claiming credit.
Al-Adnani is the second high-ranking Islamic State official to be killed in recent months after Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili, also known as Abu Umar al-Shishani, was killed by a U.S. airstrike in March.
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE The White House does not have evidence suggesting Russian Federation was involved in an air strike that killed Islamic State leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
The Pentagon said on August 30 that al-Adnani was liquidated by an airstrike of the US-led global coalition in the area of Al Bab.
“Al-Adnani’s removal from the battlefield would be a significant blow to ISIL”, Cook said Monday.
He was also a founding member of the Islamic State militant group and believed to be in line for the group’s top leadership role, now held by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said US authorities are still reviewing the results of its airstrike against Adnani, but the Russian Defense Ministry has already claimed responsibility for his death and said it occurred just west of Al Bab.
A US official says Adnani was killed by a US Predator drone (left), while Russian Federation claims a bombing run by its SU-34 fighter (right) hit the terrorist. He was also the right hand of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
On August 18, 2012, the US State Department put al-Adnani on the Special Designated Global Terrorist List with a $5 million reward for any information on the IS group militant.
Adnani “served as principal architect of IS’s external operations and as its chief spokesperson”, Cook said. ISIS has not revealed his cause of death and said it was “determined to seek revenge” for the killing. His death marks the highest-profile killing yet of an ISIS member. Cook passed up the opportunity to agree with that characterization, but emphasized that Russian Federation has largely focused on supporting the Assad regime in Syria and not on taking out top ISIS leaders.
“In the collective jihadist memory, Abu Mohamed al-Adnani will always be the one who announced the “restoration of the caliphate” in June 2014″, said expert Romain Caillet.
He said it was clear that United States intelligence had infiltrated top levels of ISIL and was increasingly aware of the movements of senior figures.
Al-Adnani, whose real name is Taha Sobhi Falaha, persistently called for attacks against the West, which paid off in bloody notoriety with the Nov 13 coordinated attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.
The US said he had “co-ordinated the movement of Isil [IS] fighters, directly encouraged lone-wolf attacks on civilians and members of the military and actively recruited” new members. In December, a senior intelligence source told NBC that Adnani was the member of ISIL – not the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – that the USA wanted dead the most.
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Amaq, the ISIL-affiliated media, said on Tuesday Adnani was killed while monitoring military operations in Aleppo.
