Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that its air strike in northern Syria killed 40 Islamic State militants, including the militant group’s spokesman and chief strategist, who had laid out the blueprint for attacks against the West.
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According to a statement from ISIS’ Amaq news agency, al-Adnani died while inspecting military operations in the area of Aleppo, Syria.
“Today, coalition forces conducted a precision strike near Al Bab, Syria, targeting Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, one of ISIL’s most senior leaders”, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.
The US said coalition forces had targeted Adnani, who had a $5-million (R73-million) bounty on his head, in an air strike in Aleppo province on Tuesday.
In Washington, the Pentagon said US-led coalition forces targeted Adnani in an airstrike in Syria’s Aleppo province on Tuesday but did not immediately confirm his death.
The terrorist organisation said in a statement that it posted on its website that Abu Mohammad Al-Adnani Ashami was killed “while inspecting military operations in the city of Aleppo”.
This article was contributed by Reuters.
The Russians who spoke with the U.S.at that time were not aware of the Syrians’ operations, a Pentagon spokesman says.
The United States continues to assess the results of the airstrike through what Cook called “a rigorous process”.
In late June 2014, al-Adnani formally announced the formation of a caliphate, or Islamic state, stretching across parts of Syria and Iraq, under al-Baghdadi’s leadership and demanded allegiance from Muslims worldwide.
Another US official said the strike was carried out by a Predator drone that fired a Hellfire missile at a auto in which Al Adnani was believed to have been travelling.
In September 2014, the USA 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”.
“Al-Adnani has served as principal architect of ISIL’s external operations and as ISIL’s chief spokesman”. He’s been responsible for attacks abroad-Al-Adnani was probably the commander behind the terror attacks in Paris in 2015, and has been encouraging lone wolf attacks on civilians.
Aymenn Jawad Tamimi, an expert on jihadist groups, said Adnani’s death was “significant symbolically and in pointing to the wider decline of the Islamic State”. The U.S. has limited its involvement to attacking Islamic State group positions.
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Al-Adnani was one of the US top targets among ISIS’s leadership, overseeing the group’s elaborate propaganda operations and credited with masterminding its strategy of staging terror attacks overseas, including the November 13 Paris attacks and the airport attacks in Brussels and Istanbul.
