Al-Adnani’s death was first reported Tuesday by the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL. “We stand by the statement we made yesterday”.
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Separately, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters that historically Russian Federation had not devoted “much, if any effort” to targeting Islamic State’s leadership and had not used precision weaponry regularly.
Ad-nani has been with ISIS since its beginnings and was close to Baghdadi.
“We’re going to continue to target ISIL leaders as we have, because we think it has taken a toll on the organization as a whole”, Cook said.
“Al-Adnani has served as principal architect of ISIL’s external operations and as ISIL’s chief spokesman”. He said the US was “still assessing the results of the strike”. Under the Adnani IS launched a large-scale attack, bombings and shootings on civilians in countries which are outside of its core.
He is a Syrian who was born in the northern province of Idlib and is believed to be in his late 30s. A later statement issued by the Islamic State group in Aleppo province vowed to avenge his death.
“What made him particularly risky was that he personally oversaw and directed ISIL’s external operations”.
This stretched across parts of Syria and Iraq, under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and al-Adnani demanded allegiance from Muslims worldwide.
In September 2014, the U.S. 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”.
Adnani was “the most viscerally aggressive ISIS leader in the public eye”, said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, using one of several names for IS.
He was arrested in May 2005 in Anbar province and is believed to have spent some time between 2005 and 2010 at the U.S. detention facility Camp Bucca.
Recent advances by the us -backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, and by Syrian rebels backed by Turkey, have made inroads into Islamic State holdings in Aleppo province, cutting them off from the Turkish border and supply lines along it. “If you can’t do that, then drive your cars, your vehicles, to kill them”, Robertson said.
Adnani was last heard in an audio message in May urging Muslims to carry out attacks in the West. But even as the United States has focused much of its counterterrorism operations on targeted strikes against terrorist leaders, analysts say the jury is still out on whether such strikes have been truly effective at curbing groups as a whole.
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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.
