In a longer statement posted on the messaging app Telegram, Amaq boasted of the group’s resilience despite Adnani’s death.
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The Pentagon said Wednesday that it has “no information” to corroborate Russian claims that it targeted and killed ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani by airstrike, and reiterated that the us did target Adnani in Syria.
A United States counter-terrorism official who monitors Daesh 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 terror group had announced Adnani’s death through its news outlet, Amaq, yesterday, saying he was “martyred while surveying the operations to repel the military campaigns against Aleppo”.
However later on Wednesday, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said that “we have no information to support” Russia’s involvement. The US Department of Defense also reported that they were still assessing the results of the airstrike.
He included: “We’re still evaluating the effects of the strike, but alAdnani’s removal in the battle field would indicate another major setback to Isil'”.
Al-Adnani was responsible for generating propaganda and inciting threats against the West.
It was the first time Moscow claimed to have killed a top-ranking IS leader. 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. The official stopped short of confirming Adnani’s death, however. This news story is related to Latest/146723-US-Russia-claim-credit-as-Daesh-spokesman-killed-in-Syria/ – breaking news, latest news, pakistan ne.
The increasingly crowded airspace over Syria also has approached the point of worldwide crisis, as evidenced last November when Turkey shot down a Russian jet for reportedly crossing into its airspace.
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.
Adnani, a senior leader in the group, has been the voice of Islamic State over the past few years, and has released numerous, lengthy audio files online in which he delivered fiery sermons urging followers to carry out attacks.
He was a founding member of IS, which evolved from Al-Qaeda in Iraq to become the pre-eminent global jihadist movement.
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If confirmed, Adnani’s death would damage the Islamic State in two areas that have made the terrorist organization particularly risky: its sophisticated use of social media to reach a global audience and its willingness to employ the crudest forms of violence in scattered attacks outside Iraq and Syria.
