Today, Wednesday, the Islamic State announced the death of its leader, Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, without specifying the place or date of his death, in an audio recording attributed to its spokesman.
The organization's spokesman, Abu Omar al-Muhajir, said in the recording, which was published by accounts close to the organization, that al-Qurashi "was killed while he was coercing God's enemies (...)".
The exact circumstances of his death were not clear.
And he announced the appointment of the so-called Abu Al-Hussein Al-Husseini Al-Qurashi as "Caliph of the Muslims" to be the fourth leader of the "Islamic State" organization.
It is not usually possible to verify the authenticity of the recordings attributed to the organization.
ISIS, which took control of large areas in Syria and Iraq in 2014, suffered a first defeat in Iraq in 2017 and then in Syria in 2019, and lost all of its main areas of control.
However, its hidden members still launch attacks, albeit limited ones, in the two countries, especially against the security forces, and the organization also claims attacks in other countries.
The US forces succeeded in arresting leaders of the organization in several killing operations, most notably its former leaders, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019, and then Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi last February in Idlib Governorate in northwestern Syria.
And last July, the United States announced that it had killed the leader of the Islamic State in Syria, Maher al-Akal, in a strike carried out by an American drone, and the Central Command in the Pentagon described him as "one of the five most prominent leaders" in the organization.
On September 9, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkish forces had arrested a "senior leader" in the "Islamic State" organization, nicknamed "Abu Zaid," whose real name is Bashar Khattab Ghazal al-Sumaida'i.
Turkish media reported at the time that evidence indicated that Al-Sumaidai might be Al-Hashemi Al-Qurashi, whose death was announced today.