The radical jihadi group "Islamic State" (IS) on Thursday released a statement confirming the death of former leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and announced that he had been replaced by Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.

An audio statement said IS jihadis had "pledged allegiance to Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi as an emir over believers and the caliph of Muslims."

The statement said of its former leader, "Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi and the official Islamic State group spokesman Abu Hamza al-Qurayshi were killed in recent days."

In fact, the former leader had been killed in a raid by US special forces operating in northwest Syria on February 3. He had replaced IS' first leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who met a similar fate at the hands of the US in October 2019.

Thus far, little is known of the group's new leader.

'Islamic State' diminished, not finished

The group's new leader takes the helm of an outfit much depleted since the days when it held sway over large swaths of Syria and Iraq, and controlled the fate of millions in the region. It ascended to the top of the region's Islamist terror outfits shortly after breaking away from another renowned jihadi group, al-Qaeda, in 2014.

The group's grip on the region was eventually broken in 2019 in an effort led by US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq.

A UN report issued in 2021 estimated that as many as 10,000 IS fighters remain active in Iraq and Syria, where they continue to attack both Kurdish forces and those of the Syrian government of Russian-backed strongman Bashar Assad.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), an Israeli terror research organization, claims IS carried out 2,705 attacks in 2021, resulting in 8,147 casualties.

Most of the attacks carried out by the group in 2021 were centered in Afghanistan, where it inflicted more than 2,200 casualties. The majority of those occurred after the US and Western allies withdrew troops in mid-2021.

That was slightly higher than in Iraq, where the ITIC said it caused 2,083 casualties. 

 

js/msh (AFP, Reuters)