Turkey kills ISIS leader in Syria, says Erdoğan

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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced yesterday (April 30) during a joint live broadcast on five networks that ISIS leader Abu Hussein al-Qurashi had been killed in northern Syria.

"The National Intelligence Agency [MİT] had been following the person identified as Abu Hussein al-Qurashi, the so-called leader of DAESH, for a long time. This person was neutralized through an operation that our National Intelligence Agency conducted yesterday in Syria," said Erdoğan, without providing further details about the operation.

"We have neutralized not one, not two, not three, but many of them when it comes to ISIS," he added.

Erdoğan also emphasized that MİT had become an "effective organization" carrying out international operations during the era of his Justice and Development Party (AKP). "Our National Intelligence Organization has a very extensive network both in terms of physical space and international communication. Our organization has also reached the capacity to host meetings between American and Russian intelligence agencies."

"Bye Bye Kemal's [Kılıçdaroğlu] will can't solve or accomplish them," he added, taunting his main rival in the upcoming presidential election.

Where was the operation conducted?

Although Erdoğan did not provide many details on the matter, Syrian opposition websites reported that the operation was carried out in the Afrin countryside, which is under the control of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the Syrian National Army (SNA).

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that the TSK and the SNA had gone into alert mode in the Miske village area, located in the Jindires district of Afrin, and that a building in the area was targeted by a rocket, resulting in the death of a person believed to be the ISIS leader.

The Syrian opposition news agency Step claimed that Abu Hussein al-Qurashi had detonated the explosives on him to avoid capture. Syria TV journalist Faiz al-Doghim shared photos from the building and its surroundings where the operation was carried out.

Photos: Faiz al-Doghim

An open-source intelligence (OSINT) and imagery intelligence (IMINT) account on Twitter named Samir determined that the exact location of the building in the photo was two kilometers north of Jindires, in the Lower Miske village.

The location is 10 km from the Hatay border, and 18 km by car from the Zeytin Dalı Border Gate in the Kumlu district.

Previous leaders before Abu Hussein al-Qurashi were Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, who was killed on February 3, 2022, in Atme, on the Hatay-Idlib border, and the group's founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed by the US in Barisha village in Idlib, 5 kilometers from the Hatay border, on October 26, 2019.

ISIS claims that its leaders, whom they refer to as "caliphs," are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad's family, hence the addition of "al-Qurashi" to the leaders' code names, in reference to the tribe of the Prophet, the Quraysh.

The fourth leader of the organization, Abu Hussein al-Qurashi, had taken over after his predecessor, Abu Hasan al-Qurashi, was killed. (VC/VK)