The Islamic State group, defeated in Iraq and Syria, announced on Wednesday the death of its leader, the Iraqi Abu Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, specifying that he had been killed “while fighting the enemies of God”.
In an audio message, the spokesperson for the jihadist group announced that a new “caliph of Muslims”, Abu Al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi, had been appointed. The group’s spokesman, Abu Omar al-Muhajir, did not give more information on the new leader, who bears the same name Al-Qurashi as his predecessor, which refers to the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad. of which the self-proclaimed “caliph” must be a descendant.
After a meteoric rise in power in 2014 in Iraq and Syria, and the conquest of vast territories, Daesh saw its self-proclaimed “caliphate” being overthrown under the blow of successive offensives in these two countries, respectively in 2017 and 2019.
Since then, the organization has been destabilized several times by the death or capture of its leaders. The first leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Qurashi, was killed in a 2019 US raid in Syria and his successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hachimi al-Qurashi, was eliminated in February in a US special forces operation in the northwest of the country.
