The Islamic State group said Tuesday that its spokesman and senior commander has been killed while overseeing military operations in northern Syria, and threatened to avenge his death.
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The IS-run Aamaq news agency said Abu Muhammed al-Adnani was “martyred while surveying the operations to repel the military campaigns in Aleppo”, without providing further details.
In statements announcing Adnani’s death, the Islamic State described him as a descendant of the tribe and family of the Prophet Muhammad, a clue that Adnani was possibly being groomed as a replacement for Baghdadi if the ISIS leader were to be killed, McCants said.
Adnani, who had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, was originally from the western Syrian province of Idlib and joined the jihadist movement in Iraq, where he served under late Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Born in the countryside of the northwestern province of Idlib, al-Adnani also served in al-Qaida in Iraq in 2003.
The official said Adnani had played a major role in the group during some of the most high-profile attacks over the past year, including in Paris, at the Brussels and Istanbul airports, at a cafe in Bangladesh, as well as the downing of a Russian airliner in the Sinai and suicide bombings at a rally in Ankara.
United States officials also say he was among the first foreign combatants to fight the existence of US-led forces in Iraq.
The Islamic State group has suffered a string of defeats in recent weeks, including in Aleppo province, where Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels drove IS out of the border town of Jarablus last week. He crossed the border and joined al-Qaida in Iraq, a precursor to IS, after the 2003 USA -led invasion.
Those military setbacks have been accompanied by air strikes that have killed several of the group’s leaders, undermining its organizational ability and dampening its morale. A biography posted on militant websites says he grew up with a “love of mosques” and was a prolific reader.
He has been the chief propagandist for the ultra-hardline jihadi group since he declared in a June 2014 statement that it was establishing a modern-day caliphate spanning large swaths of territory it had seized in Iraq and Syria.
Meanwhile, advances by a USA -backed coalition in Syria have all but cut Islamic State off from the Turkish border, after the loss of the key town of Manbij, and started to press into its Euphrates valley heartland. It did not say exactly when, where or how Adnani died.
A senior Syrian rebel official said Adnani was most probably killed in the Islamic State-held city of al-Bab in an air strike.
A few months later Adnani released an audio recording calling for lone-wolf attacks on civilians in Western countries.
Islamic State’s territory around Aleppo is of particular significance to the group because it is also the location of Dabiq, where an Islamic prophecy holds the last battle between Muslims and infidels will rage, heralding the end of time.
Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based security analyst that advises the Iraqi government on IS affairs: said:’As a military target, Adnani is less important than (ex war minister Omar) al-Shishani.(killed earlier this year in Iraq).
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There was a $5 million reward on his head under the U.S. “Rewards for Justice” program.
