ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish forces have killed the leader of the Islamic State group during an operation in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late Sunday.
In an interview on TRT Turk television, the president said the leader of the Islamic State group, who used the nickname Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi, had been killed in an attack on Saturday.
“We will continue our fight against terrorist organizations without distinguishing between any of them,” Erdogan said in the interview.
Turkey has carried out numerous operations against Kurdish groups and Islamic State, known by its acronym ISIS, along the Syrian border, capturing or killing suspected militants. The country controls large tracts of territory in northern Syria following a series of ground incursions to drive Kurdish groups away from the Turkey-Syria border.
Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi was named the leader of the extremist group after the death of his predecessor in October. An ISIS spokesman described him as “one of the veteran warriors and one of the loyal sons of Islamic State.”
He took command after the group had already lost territory it had come to control in Iraq and Syria, though it was trying to resurface with deadly attacks by sleeper cells in both countries.
US forces killed ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in northwestern Syria in October 2019. His successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was killed in a similar attack in February 2022. Abu al- Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who the US military says was killed in mid-October in an operation by Syrian rebels in the southern Syrian province of Daraa.
ISIS broke away from al Qaeda a decade ago and came to control much of northern and eastern Syria, as well as northern and western Iraq. In 2014 he declared a caliphate and drew supporters from around the world.
In the years since, extremists have claimed responsibility for attacks in different parts of the world that left hundreds dead and injured, before coming under attack from different sides. In March 2019, US-backed Syrian fighters seized the last territory held by ISIS in the eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq.
