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US-led coalition forces captured a senior Islamic State commander believed to be the group’s leader in a pre-dawn helicopter raid Wednesday near Syria’s Turkish border, killing one Iraqi citizen during the operation.
The operation took place in Atmeh, a town near the Turkish border, and an IS group commander alleged to be Abu Hafs al-Qurashi was taken away. At the same time, an Iraqi citizen was killed, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The observatory said the man captured had a French-speaking woman with him, and it is not known if she was taken by US forces or Syrian security, who later cordoned off the area.
The US military has not responded to requests from the media for comment, and it is not immediately clear if the man captured is IS’ main leader.
Two years ago, the IS group announced that a man called Abu Hafs al-Hashemi al-Qurashi had been named as its new leader after Turkish authorities killed his predecessor.
The IS jihadist group broke away from al-Qaeda more than a decade ago. It attracted supporters from around the world after it declared a self-proclaimed “caliphate” in 2014 in large parts of Syria and Iraq.
Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, the IS group’s militants still carry out deadly attacks in both countries and elsewhere.
All previous IS leaders have adopted Al-Qurashi as part of their surname, implying a connection to Quraish, the tribe to which Islam’s Prophet Muhammad belonged.
The IS group claims its leaders hail from the tribe, and al-Qurashi is used as a nom de guerre — all part of the terror organisation’s propaganda, as it is largely invented and its handful of leaders are unrelated, according to reports.
Its first leader, the self-proclaimed emir and caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, did not take on the Al-Qurashi name, despite claiming he hailed from the tribe without providing evidence.
Additional sources • AP
