Terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has confirmed the death of its previous leader Abu Ibrahim Al-hashemi Al-Quraishi, announcing the similarly-named Abu Al-Hassan Al-hashemi Al-Quraishi as his replacement on Thursday.
A spokesman from the group confirmed the previous leader’s death and announced the new leader over ISIS’ al-Furqan Media, though the name had already been circulating unofficially on social media in the preceding month.
The previous Al-Quraishi reportedly blew himself and his family up during a raid by US special forces in northwestern Syria last month. According to a senior unnamed US official, Quraishi detonated the bomb at the start of the operation, leaving at least 13 people dead in the “clashes and explosions” that ensued, according to Syrian rescue workers. However, there were no US casualties, and US President Joe Biden called the raid successful.
The now-deceased Quraishi had led the wannabe caliphate since the death of previous leader and founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who died in a similar manner during a US raid in 2019. While former president Donald Trump declared victory over the group, it had periodically surfaced to stage attacks in Syria and Iraq in the intervening years, and an Afghan splinter group called ISIS-K set off a bomb in the last days of the US presence in Kabul, killing hundreds.