Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said: “We have no information to support Russia’s claim that they also carried out a strike against Adnani”.
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Both IS’s second-in-command Abd ar-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli and its top military commander Omar al-Shishani have been killed in reported U.S. strikes since March.
On August 31, Pentagon officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity that Moscow’s claim that Islamic State leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani was killed in one of its air strikes was false and called it “a joke”.
Fair Bouchrane and Reda Hame, the two terrorists captured after the 2015 Paris bombing, identified Adnani as the main operative planner behind many of ISIS-affiliated terrorist attacks around the world. It saidAdnani was one of up to 40 ISIS militants killed by a Russian bomber in Aleppo province. It has not devoted much, if any, effort targeting ISIL’s leadership.
The Pentagon has yet to confirm that its airstrike did in fact kill the ISIS leader, with Cook saying that the military was still assessing the results of the mission near al-Bab, north-east of Aleppo.
The terror group announced al-Adnani’s death via its official news service, Amaq, on Tuesday.
“He has coordinated the movement of ISIL fighters, directly encouraged lone-wolf attacks on civilians and members of the military and actively recruited new ISIL members”.
Reports from Syria say the Islamic State group’s second-ranking leader, who served as the extremist group’s chief propagandist and also was linked to recruiting activities and attacks in Europe, has been killed in Aleppo province.
“Adnani’s killing is a signal that IS can no longer protect its most senior leaders”, said Baghdad-based expert on jihadists Hisham al-Hashimi. It is unclear how the United States identified and tracked al-Adnani, but his death, if confirmed, would highlight the ability of USA agencies to collect and coordinate information gathered from raids on IS safe houses.
He added that the USA military had “actively been looking for Adnani for some time, given his prominent role within the organization”.
“That is why the anonymous claims according to which the elimination of Abu Mohammad al-Adnani is a “joke” is the sole thing they can say to justify their unawareness”, the post, translated into English by the ministry, concluded.
“In some ways he’s a more unsafe figure than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, because he’s believed to be overseeing the external operations division of ISIS, and that’s the part of ISIS which threatens the West, which carried out the attacks in Paris, which could one day carry out an attack in the U.S. on a significant scale”, Cruickshank said. “Maybe it’s just a misunderstanding on their part”.
“How can they be aware of this data, then?”
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“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, describing the propaganda chief as “the most charismatic leader in IS”.
