ISIS confirms its top commander was killed
July 13, 2016A top Islamic State (ISIS) group commander, Omar al-Shishani, has been killed in Iraq, the jihadist-linked Amaq agency confirmed on Wednesday.
Citing a “military source,” Amaq said Shishani was killed “in the town of Sharqat as he took part in repelling the military campaign on the city of Mosul,” referring to the last ISIS-held city in Iraq.
Amaq did not specify when Shishani was killed, but the loss of the commander is a significant blow to the jihadist group, which has suffered a string of setbacks in Iraq this year.
The Pentagon announced in March that American forces had killed Shishani and said his death would likely hamper ISIS’s ability to carry out operations inside and outside of Iraq and Syria.
But it did not specify how or where he was killed.
American officials previously said Shishani “likely died” in an air strike, but reports surfaced that he had survived and was “clinically dead”.
Shishani was a fierce, battle-hardened warlord with roots in Georgia and a thick red beard who was one of the most notorious faces of ISIS.
Shishani, whose nom de guerre means “Omar the Chechen”, was described as ISIS’ “defense secretary”, and was one of the ISIS leaders most wanted by Washington which had put a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head.
Shishani came from the former Soviet state of Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge region, which is populated mainly by ethnic Chechens.
He fought as a Chechen rebel against Russian forces before joining the Georgian military in 2006, and fought Russian forces again in Georgia in 2008.
He later resurfaced in northern Syria as the commander of a group of foreign fighters, and became a senior leader within ISIS.
AFP contributed to this report.
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