The Islamic State group has said its spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani was killed while monitoring military operations in the Syrian province of Aleppo.
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The U.S. and Russian Federation have a memorandum or understanding (MOU) in place to deconflict airspace over Syria, where they have both been operating independently of one another since September 2015, when Russian Federation entered the air campaign – divided over the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Among those terrorists, according to the information confirmed through several intelligence channels, there was the military leader Abu Mohammad al-Adnani known as the Spokesperson of the global terrorist organization the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ‘” the statement continued.
The ISIL-affiliated Amaq news agency announced Al Adnani’s death late on Tuesday, saying he “was martyred while surveying operations to repel the military campaigns against Aleppo” province in northern Syria.
ISIS said that Adnani was killed in the Aleppo province, and the USA said it had targeted him in an area near by the major battleground city.
US-led coalition forces have not confirmed his death, but the Pentagon acknowledged he was targeted in a precision strike Tuesday near Al-Bab, Syria.
The death is a major blow for the militant group as they continue to suffer losses in Iraq and Syria.
The U.S.is challenging Russia’s claim that its airstrike killed ISIS’s official spokesman in Syria, with one American official calling the idea “a joke”.
Adnani was one of the few current Daesh leaders to also be a founding member of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Daesh’s forefather organization. The U.S. State Department described him as the “main conduit for the dissemination of [ISIS] messages”. One of the last survivors of the Al-Qaeda militants who originally formed Daesh last decade in Iraq, including its self-appointed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Adnani had risen to become one of its most influential leaders.
Adnani “served as principal architect of ISIL’s external operations and as ISIL’s chief spokesman”, Cook said.
Born in 1977, al-Adnani made a point of encouraging supporters to kill Western non-believers wherever they could.
“We are still assessing the results of that strike”, he said. He was also reported to have been involved in organising high-profile ISIS attacks overseas that killed hundreds, including in Paris, Brussels and Istanbul. In an unprecedented operation, Turkey sent tanks into Syria to help Arab rebels clear the border area of ISIS jihadists and halt the westward advance of US-backed Kurdish force that Ankara sees as a terrorist group.
In Washington, the spokesman for the Pentagon, Peter Cook, said it had no information to support Moscow’s claim that Russian Federation had also targeted Adnani with an airstrike.
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“Al-Adnani’s removal from the battlefield would be a significant blow to ISIL”, Cook said Monday. He’s been responsible for attacks abroad-Al-Adnani was probably the commander behind the terror attacks in Paris in 2015, and has been encouraging lone wolf attacks on civilians.
