The Islamic State group announced, Wednesday, November 30, the death of its leader, the Iraqi Abou Hassan al-Hachimi al-Qurachi, specifying that he had been killed “by fighting against the enemies of God”. In an audio message, the spokesperson for the jihadist group specified that a new “Caliph of the Muslims”, Abu Al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurachi, had been appointed. The group’s spokesman did not give more details about the new leader of the group, which bears, like its predecessor, the name of the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad, the Quraychites.
After a meteoric rise in power in 2014 in Iraq and Syria, and the conquest of vast territories, the IS 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. ISIS’s first leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Qurachi, was killed in a US raid in Syria in 2019. His successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurachi, was killed in February 2022 in a US special forces operation in the northwest of the country.
Despite the loss of its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, the group continues to claim responsibility for attacks in these two countries through sleeper cells. The organization has also extended its influence in other regions of the world, such as in the Sahel zone, in Nigeria, in Yemen or in Afghanistan, where it regularly claims responsibility for attacks.