IS confirms Baghdadi’s death
Appoints successor; US releases raid video, details
The Islamic State militant group yesterday confirmed its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed, the group’s news agency Amaq said in an audio tape following a US weekend raid.
Baghdadi, an Iraqi jihadist who rose from obscurity to declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims as the leader of Islamic State, was killed by US special forces in northwestern Syria, President Donald Trump said on Sunday.
The group had been silent until now. As successor it appointed someone Amaq only identified as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi.
Aymenn al-Tamimi, a researcher at Swansea University focused on Islamic State, said the name was unknown but could be a top figure called Hajj Abdullah whom the US State Department had identified as a possible successor to Baghdadi
“It could be someone we know, who perhaps has just assumed this new name,” said Tamimi.
The group, which controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017 and carried out atrocities that horrified most Muslims, also confirmed the death of its spokesman Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir. Baghdadi was killed in Idlib in northwestern Syria.
US special forces carried out the Syrian operation in which Baghdadi killed himself and three of his children by detonating a suicide vest when he was cornered in a tunnel, according to US officials.
The Pentagon on Wednesday released its first images from last weekend’s commando raid in Syria that led to the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and warned the militant group may attempt to stage a “retribution attack.”
The declassified, grainy, black-and-white aerial videos from Saturday’s raid showed US special operations forces closing in on the compound and US aircraft firing on militants nearby.
The most dramatic video showed a massive, black plume of smoke rising from the ground after US military bombs leveled Baghdadi’s compound.
Marine General Kenneth McKenzie said Turkey’s incursion into Syria this month, and the U.S. pullback from the border, was not a factor in deciding the timing of the raid.