ISIS Reveals New Leader After Previous Chief Was Killed; New Boss Described as 'Old Fighter'

On Wednesday, ISIS recognized the death of its leader and named his replacement. Al-Furqan, the group's media affiliate, broadcast an audio message from an ISIS spokesperson confirming the death of the group's commander, who was appointed in March.

ISIS did not say who or where murdered the group chief. The gang named him successor, Abu al-Husain al-Husaini al-Quraishi. Less has identified about him, but the organization labeled him as a "old fighter" without elaborating.

Who is ISIS New Leader?

After US President Joe Biden declared the killing of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in a military operation in northwest Syria, ISIS appointed the deceased leader in March 2022, according to CNN. Following a dramatic ascent in Iraq and Syria in 2014 that saw it take enormous swaths of territory, ISIS's self-proclaimed '"caliphate" was shattered by a wave of offensives.

It was destroyed in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but the Sunni Muslim extremist group's sleeper cells continue to carry out attacks in both countries and claim assaults abroad in the world. Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, the former commander of ISIS, was killed earlier this year in a US operation in northern Syria's Idlib region.

He was an ethnic Turkmen from the Iraqi city of Tal Afar and had commanded ISIS since 2019. According to Washington, the terror commander blew himself up in early February during a US assault in northwest Syria, in a region controlled by rival jihadists.

His successor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a US strike in Idlib in October 2019. Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi takes over as ISIS has been decimated by US-backed operations in Iraq and Syria aimed at preventing a jihadist revival. ISIS remnants in Syria primarily moved to desert hideouts, where they continue to harass Kurdish-led forces and Syrian government soldiers. According to a UN study published last year, around 10,000 IS militants were active in Iraq and Syria.

According to Hassan Hassan, author of an ISIS book, 'one uncommon but feasible possibility is that Hashimi was murdered accidently during a raid or combat without his knowledge to whomever killed him.'

US Forces Killed Senior ISIS Memeber

US forces killed a senior ISIS member in a pre-dawn raid in northeastern Syria in October, according to the US military's Central Command at the time. It claimed that a later air strike killed two more senior ISIS members. The United States leads a military coalition against ISIS in Syria. In July, the Pentagon said that it had killed Syria's top ISIS terrorist in a drone hit in the country's north. According to US Central Command, he was "one of the top five" ISIS leaders.

In September, Turkey announced the arrest of Abu Zeyd, an ISIS "high official" whose true name was Bashar Khattab Ghazal al-Sumaidai. According to Turkish media, there were some signs that Sumaidai was the ISIS head, Daily Mail reported.

The horrific reign of the Islamic State, which murdered and executed thousands of people in the name of its limited interpretation of Islam, came to an end in Mosul in 2017 when Iraqi and international troops crushed the organisation there.

Since its peak seven years ago, when it governed millions of people in the Middle East and terrified the globe with terrible bombs and shootings, the Islamic State has faded into obscurity. Its residual thousands of fighters have primarily sheltered out in the rural hinterlands of war-torn Iraq and Syria in recent years, while they are still capable of carrying out massive insurgent-style strikes, as per The Sun.