Erdogan: Turkish troops kill the leader of Daesh in Syria

 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared on Sunday that during an operation in Syria, Turkish forces had killed the leader of the Daesh organization.

Notably, Erdogan claimed in an interview with TRT Turk that the Daesh commander, known by the codename Abu Hussein Al-Qurayshi, was slain in a strike on Saturday.

He said that MIT, the Turkish intelligence service, has been keeping tabs on him "for a long time."

He stated in the interview, "We will keep up our fight against terrorist organizations without making any distinctions against them.

Along the Syrian border, Turkiye has engaged in a number of operations against Daesh and Kurdish groups, arresting or killing suspected militants. Following a series of land incursions to drive Kurdish groups away from the Turkish-Syrian border, the nation now controls large swaths of northern Syria.

After the militant group's previous leader was assassinated in October, Abu Hussein Al-Qurayshi was named leader. A Daesh spokesman referred to him as "one of the veteran warriors and one of the loyal sons of the Islamic State."

He assumed charge of Daesh at a time when the terrorist organization had lost control of the areas it had controlled in Syria and Iraq. He had been attempting to resurrect, though, and lethal attacks were being carried out by sleeper cells.

The US military conducted a mission in northwest Syria in October 2019 in an effort to find the man who founded Daesh, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. In a similar operation in February 2022, his successor Abu Ibrahim Al-Hashimi Al-Qurayshi was assassinated. Abu Al-Hassan Al-Hashimi Al-Qurayshi, who the US military claims was killed in a Syrian opposition assault in the southern province of Daraa in mid-October, came after him.

About ten years ago, the Daesh group split from Al-Qaeda and came to dominate sizable portions of northern and eastern Syria as well as northern and western Iraq. The militants' so-called caliphate was proclaimed in 2014, drawing followers from all around the world.

They claimed responsibility for attacks that left hundreds dead or injured in the years that followed before facing opposition from several angles. The remaining patch of territory the jihadists once controlled in Syria's eastern province of Deir Ezzor, which borders Iraq, was taken by Syrian fighters with US support in March 2019.