Death of IS chief Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi: What we all know

A day after the loss of life of Islamic State chief Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi throughout a US raid in Syria, many questions stay on the operation and the jihadist group’s future.

How was he situated?Qurashi was killed within the city of Atme throughout a nighttime airborne operation on his home.US officers mentioned his location had been narrowed down final yr. The constructing’s proprietor advised AFP Qurashi had been residing there for 11 months.The raid got here days after IS launched its greatest operation in years to spring fighters from an enormous Kurdish-run jail within the northeastern metropolis of Hasakeh.”The timing of the operation suggests that there was intelligence linking Qurashi to the Ghwayran prison attack,” mentioned Nick Heras, an analyst on the Newlines Institute.”It would not be surprising that the US put pressure on Turkey to relinquish information.”Turkey holds appreciable sway over northwestern Syria and maintains a type of working relationship with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the jihadist that controls many of the Idlib space.Large numbers of IS prisoners are thought to have damaged out in the course of the Hasakeh assault. Their subsequent trajectories and communications might have created intelligence alternatives.”If Qurashi was planning to record a statement about the recent attacks, perhaps that created an opening,” mentioned Aron Lund, a fellow with Century International.Iraq’s prime minister on Thursday claimed credit score for gathering the intelligence that led to one of many world’s most needed males.How did he die?According to the White House and US defence officers, Qurashi died when he detonated a bomb to keep away from seize.”He killed himself and his immediate family without fighting, even as we attempted to call for his surrender and offered him a path to survive,” the pinnacle of US Central Command, General Kenneth McKenzie, mentioned.The seen harm to the three-level home — together with burn marks and a collapsed a part of the roof — have a tendency to verify a minimum of one explosion occurred inside the home.Neighbours advised AFP they heard explosions however US official statements are right now the one model of what occurred inside the home.US Pentagon spokesman John Kirby mentioned Qurashi’s fingerprint identification was accomplished on web site however didn’t explicitly say whether or not US forces had taken the physique away or left it behind.A photograph purporting to point out the slain IS chief’s face that circulated on social media couldn’t be authenticated by AFP and doesn’t present clear data as to how he died.Who else was there?US officers have mentioned a minimum of three civilians died in the course of the raid, along with Qurashi and two others exterior the home on whom the particular forces returned fireplace.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights battle monitor mentioned it had reviews of 13 useless, 12 of them killed inside the home.Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman mentioned Qurashi had two wives, each of whom have been killed within the raid, along with the IS chief’s sister and her grownup daughter.He additionally mentioned the our bodies of 4 youngsters have been recovered, in addition to two different incomplete our bodies that will have been youngsters’s.Save the Children mentioned a minimum of six youngsters, together with two infants, have been killed in the course of the raid.Abdel Rahman mentioned one among Qurashi’s senior associates was additionally killed.One of Qurashi’s wounded youngsters was handled by civil defence however then transferred to an unknown location by forces linked to HTS.Why in Idlib?Qurashi had been hiding in a city removed from IS’s space of operations and below the management of HTS, a rival jihadist group.Yet analysts argue it’s hardly stunning he was tracked all the way down to an space removed from IS’s heartland, which covers the arid expanses straddling the Iraqi-Syria border between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.His predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was additionally killed in Idlib province, about 15 kilometres (9 miles) away, in October 2019.”Idlib is a messy war zone full of displaced people, with little proper policing and no real state structures or record-keeping,” mentioned Lund.Hassan Hassan, who authored a e-book on IS, mentioned Idlib is safer for an IS chief than the areas in western Iraq or jap Syria the place anti-IS forces have acquired years of expertise monitoring down jihadists.”It is a hostile area for IS because its rivals dominate that region of northern Syria, but it is precisely the right place to hide where nobody expects you to be there,” he mentioned.Hassan, who can also be a Newlines analyst, mentioned shut Qurashi aides had been working the group’s operations and constructing companies within the space for 2 years.What subsequent for IS?The week-long assault on the Ghwayran jail IS launched two weeks earlier had raised fears of a resurgence, practically three years after IS misplaced the final scraps of its “caliphate”.For Hassan, nonetheless, the jail assault was “not part of a strategic comeback, nor an indication of recovery”.”The group remains weak and exposed,” he mentioned, including that Thursday’s raid was additional proof of rising effectivity by the US and allied forces tasked with monitoring down IS leaders.Qurashi was largely invisible throughout his time on the helm however the group, which has not but acknowledged his loss of life, will nonetheless must discover a new “caliph”.Experts say there are few apparent names for a successor however that the subsequent IS chief will probably hail from the identical space.Qurashi was an ethnic Turkmen from the Iraqi metropolis of Tal Afar who performed a key function within the marketing campaign of ethnic cleaning in opposition to the Yazidi minority in 2014.Also learn | From Kerala to Kabul to Kashmir— how Islamic State Khorasan poses menace to India