A USA defense official has said the Islamic State group’s spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani who was killed in Syria recently played a major role in the Dhaka cafe attack, according to AFP news agency on Wednesday. Russia’s own statement, on Wednesday, claimed their intelligence said Adnani was killed in one of their airstrikes, and that he was among 40 ISIS fighters slain.
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But Adnani’s death will be a major blow to ISIS, which has suffered a series of setbacks this year, including territorial losses in Syria and Iraq and the killings of other top figures.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook, using an alternative name for IS, said an air strike near Al-Bab had targeted Adnani, describing him as the “principal architect of ISIL’s external operations and…”
“He has coordinated the movement of ISIL fighters, directly encouraged lone-wolf attacks on civilians and members of the military and actively recruited new ISIL members”. The claim came after the Pentagon said on Tuesday that it had carried out a precision strike targeting Adnani near Al Bab, Syria.
Al Adnani was “the most viscerally aggressive ISIS leader in the public eye”, said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Recent advances by Iraq and its allies toward the city of Mosul, where ISIS has its most important foothold, combined with the USA coalition cutting ISIS off from the border of Turkey has put pressure on the group.
Al-Adnani was born Taha Sobhi Falaha in the northern Syrian town of Banash in 1977 and had a United States bounty of $5m (£3.82m) on his head. The U.S. Department of Defense also reported that they were still assessing the results of the airstrike.
The latest death is Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, described as the “principal architect” of attacks on the West, although this time both the United States and Russian Federation claimed credit for his killing.
In June 2014, he was the first to declare a caliphate for parts of Syria and Iraq, indicating ISIS’ aim of not just being a terrorist group but a governing entity.
“In isolation, Adnani’s death represents the demise of an important strategic and operational leader of the Islamic State – though only one person”, said Seth Jones, a terrorism specialist at the RAND Corp.
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.
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In Iraq, the group has lost its strongholds in Fallujah and Ramadi, in the western Anbar province. It still controls Mosul, but Iraqi forces are gearing up for a long-awaited operation to retake the country’s second largest city.
