Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that a Russian Su-34 bomber carried out a strike against as many as 40 ISIS militants, including Adnani.
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The spokesman for ISIS Abu Mohammed Al-Adnani has reportedly been killed in Aleppo yesterday whilst “inspecting military operations”.
Hours after the announcement, there was no official confirmation of Adnani’s death, though the Pentagon said he had been the target of United States air strikes on Tuesday in the al-Bab region of northern Syria.
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said on Tuesday the US was “still assessing the results of the strike”.
Adnani, the ISIS propaganda chief and a key architect of attacks in the West, died in Aleppo province on Tuesday.
Regardless of who was responsible, analysts say his death will be a major bow to ISIL, which has suffered a series of setbacks this year including territorial losses in Syria and Iraq and the killings of other top figures. He said the US was “still assessing the results of the strike”.
Known for ruthless tactics and his thick red beard, Shishani, whose Georgian name was Tarkhan Batirashvili, was one of the most sought IS leaders in Syria, described by USA officials who put a $5-million bounty on his head as the group’s de facto defence minister.
However, ISIS didn’t reveal the cause of Adnani’s death. “We have no reason to believe Russia’s claim”, the official told NBC News.
The coalition had been actively looking for Adnani for some time, he said.
Russian Federation has claimed responsibility for the airstrike that killed the official spokesman of ISIS, Mohammad al-Adnani.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has announced the death of its top-ranking Lt. Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, who was allegedly being groomed to succeed the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, while he served as the jihadi organization’s chief propagandist and strategist for external terror operations.
A USA defense official said Adnani was directly involved in recruiting foreign fighters and also directed Islamic State’s major attacks outside of its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
“That’s a joke”, the official said. “And at the same time, we have not seen the Russian military campaign use precision weaponry on a regular basis as well”, he said.
News of al-Adnani’s death sparked conflicting claims from Washington and Moscow over who targeted him.
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A U.S. defence official said the US-led coalition forces battling ISIL had conducted an air strike Tuesday targeting a “senior leader” of the group, without specifying who the leader was. In late June 2014, he formally declared the establishment of a caliphate, or Islamic state.
