THE leader of ISIS has been killed in battle, the terror group has said.
The extremists have revealed a new commander after Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi died fighting in Syria.
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Al-Quraishi had been selected in March to lead IS militants before being killed in an operation by the rebel-free Syrian army in mid-October, the US military said.
No U.S. troops were involved in the operation, the district’s military spokesman said.
ISIS spokesman Abu Omar al-Muhajer confirmed the leader’s death in an audio message on Wednesday.
He said al-Quraishi was killed while “fighting enemies of God”, without elaborating.
Al-Quraishi was appointed the following March Joe Biden announced the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in Syria.
The US president said the leader blew himself up and his family after using his own children as human shields during a bloody attack by US special forces.
He was put in charge after former chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a similar raid by US forces in the nearby town of Barisha in 2019.
The jihadists have announced their newest leader as Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi.
The ISIS spokesman did not give many details about the new head, but said he was a “veteran” jihadist and urged all groups loyal to IS to swear allegiance.
Hassan Hassan, author of a book on Islamic State, said the group has shrunk.
He said: “This doesn’t mean the group is done, but for now it’s a shadow of its former self, they’ve eroded in terms of their leadership and their ability to launch attacks.
“They no longer have iconic, charismatic leaders and they have not carried out any major attacks recently.”
The White House welcomed the news that al-Quraishi had been killed, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Islamic State emerged from the chaos of civil war in neighboring Iraq and took over large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Former IS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed an Islamic caliphate that year from a mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and proclaimed himself caliph of all Muslims.
The Islamic State’s ruthless rule, which killed and executed thousands of people in the name of its narrow interpretation of Islam, came to an end in Mosul when Iraqi and international forces defeated the group there in 2017.
Since the height of its power seven years ago, when it ruled millions of people in the Middle East and terrified the world with deadly bombings and shootings, the Islamic State has once again slipped into the shadows.
The remaining thousands of militants have been largely hiding in remote backlands of fractured Iraq and Syria in recent years, though they are still capable of launching significant insurgent attacks.