The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, assures that Turkey has "neutralized" the until now leader and self-proclaimed caliph of the jihadist organization Islamic State (also known as ISIS or Daesh).
The action occurred last Saturday in Afrin, an area in northwestern Syria controlled by Turkey and related Syrian rebel forces since 2018. The leader of the terrorist group refused to surrender to Turkish forces and blew himself up after activating an explosive vest.
"The National Intelligence Organization [MIT, the Turkish secret services] have been following the self-proclaimed leader of Daesh, who goes by the alias Abu Hussein Al Quraishi, for a long time," explained the Turkish president during a live interview on Sunday by the night with the public television channel TRT, as part of the election campaign on May 14.
“This is the first time I have told this.
This person was neutralized in an operation carried out by MIT yesterday [Saturday],” Erdogan said, without elaborating on the operation.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had published the same Sunday that "a prominent ISIS leader was killed and another was arrested" during an operation by "Turkish special forces and members of the Syrian National Army", formed by Syrian rebel factions under the leadership of Turkey. .
Local sources explained to the Reuters agency that the fighting began on the night of Saturday to Sunday and a strong explosion was heard.
The operation took place in a village near Yindires, in northwest Syria, on an abandoned farm that was used as an Islamic school, said a resident of the area quoted by the AFP agency.
The Turkish channel NTV, citing official sources, reported on Monday that the action by the Turkish forces lasted four hours.
According to his account, they asked Al Quraishi to surrender and turn himself in.
He refused and the Turkish military collapsed the wall to enter the compound.
When they were inside, the leader of the terrorist group blew himself up with an explosive vest.
The town where the operation took place is in the Afrin region, dominated by Kurdish forces until, in January 2018, Turkey launched a military operation that culminated in its occupation.
Thousands of locals fled to areas controlled by Kurdish militias, and in their place, Turkey established displaced Arabs and rebel factions fleeing offensives by Bashar al-Assad's regime.
After losing the vast tracts of territory they controlled in Syria and Iraq, some ISIS leaders and leaders have sought refuge both in the rebel-held areas of northern Syria under direct Turkish control and a little further south, in the province of Idlib, which It is under the rule of the Salafi group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (a former Syrian affiliate of Al Qaeda) although there is a certain Turkish military presence.
These are areas overcrowded by millions of displaced people from other regions of the country who survive in camps or squalid housing, where institutions are very weak and armed groups compete with each other for control in frequent confrontations.
“It is notable that the leadership of the Islamic State is in areas of influence of the Turkish-backed forces, and hides among the factions,
In October 2019, the US military killed the founder and self-proclaimed first caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr Al Bagdadi, in Idlib.
Also in Idlib, his successor, Abu Ibrahim Al Quraishi, was killed in another US operation in February last year.
From there, the longevity of the leaders of the jihadist group has shortened: in November, the self-proclaimed third caliph, Abu Al Hasan Al Quraishi, fell in southern Syria in an operation carried out by Syrian rebels.
And the new leader has only lasted until this April.
Despite this, ISIS cells continue to carry out attacks, especially in the desert areas of northeastern Syria, under the control of Kurdish militias.
According to data from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in the month of April alone, the jihadist organization killed 11 members of the Kurdish security forces in about twenty attacks.
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