The Russian Ministry of Defense said that he had been killed when one of its Su-34 bombers hit a group of 40 militants in Ma’arat Umm Hawsh, just north of Aleppo, TASS news reported.
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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 worldwide terrorist organization the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ‘ ” it said.
In an official statement, the Islamic State said al-Adnani had been killed while checking up on the group’s military operations in Aleppo province.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon said it had targeted Adnani in airstrikes in the city of al Bab, northeast of Aleppo, but was unable to confirm he had been killed. “And we are still assessing the results of that strike”, Cook said. He was the terror group’s chief spokesman and also planned terror strikes around the world.
A United States defense official called Adnani “one of ISIL’s most senior leaders”, stressing that he was “way more” than simply the group’s spokesman. Washington has accused Moscow of attacking more moderate antigovernment rebels, including some supported by the U.S.
“If you can kill a disbelieving American or European, especially the spiteful and filthy French”, Adnani said in 2014, “kill him in any manner or way however it may be”.
Al-Adnani, whose real name is Taha Sobhi Falaha, persistently called for attacks against the West, which paid off in bloody notoriety with the Nov 13 coordinated attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.
BEIRUT (AP) The Islamic State group’s spokesman and chief strategist, who laid out the blueprint for the extremist group’s attacks against the West, has been killed while overseeing operations in northern Syria, the group announced Tuesday. Contrary to those who attribute poverty to the motivation of terrorist forces like ISIS, Al-Adnani – like many other terrorist leaders – came from a well-to-do family in Syria.
Another US official said the strike was carried out by a Predator drone that fired a Hellfire missile at a vehicle in which Al Adnani was believed to have been travelling.
He was from a well-to-do background but left Syria to travel to Iraq to fight USA forces there after its 2003 invasion, and only returned to his homeland after the start of its own civil war in 2011, a person who knew his family 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.
“In isolation, Adnani’s death represents the demise of an important strategic and operational leader of the Islamic State – though only one person”, Seth G. Jones, a terrorism specialist at the RAND Corporation, told the Times.
Analysts have described Adnani as a key figure in the jihadist group.
Al-Adnani was one of the first to pledge allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who founded the precursor of IS after the US -led invasion of Iraq.
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It was Adnani who in a June 2014 audio recording declared IS’s establishment of a “caliphate” straddling Syria and Iraq and Baghdadi as “leader of Muslims everywhere”.
