Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi Wiki

Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi Biography

Iraq’s Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was killed ‘in combat with the enemies of God’ and a replacement has already been announced.

Speaking in an audio message, the spokesman identified the group’s new leader as Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi.

Qurashi refers to a tribe of the Prophet Muhammad, from whom ISIS leaders must claim descent.

Little is known about the leader who is seizing control of the embattled terror group whose influence in the Middle East has waned in recent years.

After a meteoric rise in Iraq and Syria in 2014 that saw it conquer vast tracts of territory, ISIS saw its self-proclaimed ‘caliphate’ collapse under a wave of offensives.

It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, but the extremist Sunni Muslim group’s sleeper cells are still carrying out attacks in both countries and calling for attacks in other parts of the world.

ISIS’s previous leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, was killed earlier this year in a US raid in northern Syria’s Idlib province.

He had led ISIS since 2019 and was an ethnic Turkmen from the Iraqi city of Tal Afar.

The terror leader blew himself up in early February during a US raid in northwestern Syria, according to Washington, in an area controlled by rival jihadists.

His predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed, also in Idlib, in a US raid in October 2019.

New leader Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi takes the helm as ISIS has been weakened by US-backed operations in Iraq and Syria aimed at thwarting a jihadist resurgence.

ISIS remnants in Syria have mainly headed for their desert hideouts from where they continue to harass Kurdish-led forces and Syrian government troops.

A UN report last year estimated that around 10,000 Islamic State fighters remained active in Iraq and Syria.