But a United States defense official slammed Russia’s assertion.
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This likely wouldn’t be such an issue if the early reports hadn’t centered so heavily around how super important Adnani was, though in practice nearly any slain ISIS fighter that officials have a name for is presented as one of their upper echelon, and virtually irreplaceable, even though history has shown ISIS to be remarkably resilient and able to replace about anybody.
Both ISIS’ 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. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some plots in Western capitals”, he said.
The officials added their attack was carried out in the area by a USA drone.
Washington has vowed to “systematically eliminate” senior IS leaders and has put a $10-million (R146-million) bounty on the group’s elusive leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
A statement from Isis said that Adnani had been killed while surveying the operations to repel the military campaigns against Aleppo. No cause of death was given. He crossed the border and joined al-Qaida in Iraq, after the 2003 US-led invasion. After the news surfaced, the Pentagon said it had targeted him with a precision strike near al-Bab, in Allepo Province, but had not confirmed he was killed in the strike.
“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”, Mr Cook said.
A USA counter-terrorism official who monitors Islamic State said Adnani’s death would hurt the militants “in the area that increasingly concerns us as the group loses more and more of its caliphate and its financial base … and turns to mounting and inspiring more attacks in Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere”.
“The blood of the sheikhs will only make it more firm on the path of jihad and determination to take revenge and assault”, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. As such, the external operations unit reported up to Ad-nani.
Adnani, who had a US$5 million U.S. bounty on his head, was originally from the western Syrian province of Idlib and joined the militant movement in Iraq, where he served under late Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In late June 2014, al-Adnani formally announced the formation of a caliphate, or Islamic state, stretching across parts of Syria and Iraq, under al-Baghdadi’s leadership and demanded allegiance from Muslims worldwide.
However, ISIS didn’t reveal the cause of Adnani’s death.
In September 2014, the USA government designated Adnani a “global terrorist” and the State Department has offered a $5 million reward for anyone who supplies information “that brings him to justice”.
“This is someone who has been a senior leader in ISIL”, Cook said.
Aymenn Jawad Tamimi, an expert on jihadist groups, said his death was “significant symbolically and in pointing to the wider decline of the Islamic State”.
“He was the mouthpiece of ISIS”. He said things like, ‘If you can’t shoot them, then stab them, and if you can’t stab them, then crush their heads with rocks.
But it has done this partly by harnessing shock tactics and social media to inspire and guide attacks by radicalised amateurs, rather than rely exclusively upon the highly trained but cumbersome militant cells of an earlier era. He is “directly responsible” for recruiting foreign fighters and encouraging attacks against the West, Cook said.
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He added that while the killing might be a blow to the Islamic State’s morale, there’s no established consensus about whether killing leaders is actually an effective way to defeat militant groups.
