Zürcher Nachrichten - Death of IS chief: what we know

EUR -
AED 3.864558
AFN 70.494102
ALL 97.271059
AMD 407.155517
ANG 1.896104
AOA 960.613091
ARS 1056.248038
AUD 1.631278
AWG 1.8965
AZN 1.791206
BAM 1.954184
BBD 2.124143
BDT 125.716025
BGN 1.949289
BHD 0.396502
BIF 3048.60406
BMD 1.05215
BND 1.415816
BOB 7.269126
BRL 6.090159
BSD 1.05203
BTN 88.793862
BWP 14.440919
BYN 3.442853
BYR 20622.13618
BZD 2.120586
CAD 1.47947
CDF 3015.461382
CHF 0.937518
CLF 0.037193
CLP 1026.277825
CNY 7.607358
CNH 7.633568
COP 4716.787576
CRC 537.355573
CUC 1.05215
CUP 27.88197
CVE 110.363712
CZK 25.291264
DJF 186.988154
DKK 7.458676
DOP 63.602651
DZD 140.588561
EGP 52.233238
ERN 15.782247
ETB 128.283337
FJD 2.393671
FKP 0.83048
GBP 0.831162
GEL 2.867092
GGP 0.83048
GHS 16.887178
GIP 0.83048
GMD 74.702778
GNF 9081.104686
GTQ 8.124589
GYD 220.093785
HKD 8.187341
HNL 26.387556
HRK 7.505257
HTG 138.234358
HUF 406.601144
IDR 16790.574842
ILS 3.937918
IMP 0.83048
INR 88.885401
IQD 1378.84232
IRR 44300.767226
ISK 145.690973
JEP 0.83048
JMD 166.542259
JOD 0.746077
JPY 164.475189
KES 136.255597
KGS 90.881018
KHR 4262.25889
KMF 490.83124
KPW 946.934426
KRW 1480.916654
KWD 0.323452
KYD 0.876658
KZT 521.56863
LAK 23089.427195
LBP 94272.622526
LKR 307.355797
LRD 193.70505
LSL 19.147959
LTL 3.106725
LVL 0.636435
LYD 5.134208
MAD 10.492567
MDL 19.056877
MGA 4903.018084
MKD 61.274857
MMK 3417.341525
MNT 3575.204981
MOP 8.433465
MRU 42.049169
MUR 49.650906
MVR 16.266333
MWK 1825.479971
MXN 21.508788
MYR 4.715726
MZN 67.179687
NAD 19.147075
NGN 1767.569779
NIO 38.677193
NOK 11.743833
NPR 142.075896
NZD 1.79987
OMR 0.4051
PAB 1.05205
PEN 4.002903
PGK 4.147838
PHP 61.975307
PKR 292.604659
PLN 4.320964
PYG 8216.204675
QAR 3.830614
RON 4.9753
RSD 116.403513
RUB 104.831166
RWF 1439.340933
SAR 3.951908
SBD 8.820576
SCR 15.513945
SDG 632.870058
SEK 11.582286
SGD 1.41671
SHP 0.83048
SLE 23.881015
SLL 22063.060321
SOS 601.301259
SRD 37.200331
STD 21777.376683
SVC 9.205387
SYP 2643.557801
SZL 19.154703
THB 36.838902
TJS 11.214312
TMT 3.682524
TND 3.316347
TOP 2.464243
TRY 36.140494
TTD 7.143092
TWD 34.320603
TZS 2798.718783
UAH 43.369431
UGX 3860.806867
USD 1.05215
UYU 44.693036
UZS 13467.517223
VES 47.823448
VND 26724.605049
VUV 124.913339
WST 2.937172
XAF 655.402482
XAG 0.034478
XAU 0.00041
XCD 2.843488
XDR 0.792537
XOF 652.851937
XPF 119.331742
YER 262.879515
ZAR 19.237481
ZMK 9470.611478
ZMW 28.851686
ZWL 338.791808
  • RBGPF

    -0.9400

    59.25

    -1.59%

  • BCC

    -2.2000

    140.35

    -1.57%

  • RIO

    -0.1900

    60.43

    -0.31%

  • BCE

    -0.3700

    26.84

    -1.38%

  • BTI

    0.0700

    35.49

    +0.2%

  • GSK

    -0.7200

    34.39

    -2.09%

  • SCS

    -0.1000

    13.27

    -0.75%

  • NGG

    0.2500

    62.37

    +0.4%

  • CMSC

    -0.0600

    24.55

    -0.24%

  • JRI

    -0.0300

    13.21

    -0.23%

  • BP

    0.4800

    29.05

    +1.65%

  • RELX

    -0.1700

    45.95

    -0.37%

  • RYCEF

    -0.3200

    6.79

    -4.71%

  • AZN

    -0.2500

    65.04

    -0.38%

  • CMSD

    -0.0050

    24.725

    -0.02%

  • VOD

    -0.0700

    8.68

    -0.81%

Death of IS chief: what we know
Death of IS chief: what we know

Death of IS chief: what we know

A day after the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi during a US raid in Syria, many questions remain on the operation and the jihadist group's future.

Text size:

How was he located?

Qurashi was killed in the town of Atme during a nighttime airborne operation on his house.

US officials said his location had been narrowed down last year. The building's owner told AFP Qurashi had been living there for 11 months.

The raid came days after IS launched its biggest operation in years to spring fighters from a huge Kurdish-run prison in the northeastern city of Hasakeh.

"The timing of the operation suggests that there was intelligence linking Qurashi to the Ghwayran prison attack," said Nick Heras, an analyst at the Newlines Institute.

"It would not be surprising that the US put pressure on Turkey to relinquish information."

Turkey holds considerable sway over northwestern Syria and maintains a form of working relationship with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the jihadist that controls most of the Idlib area.

Large numbers of IS prisoners are thought to have broken out during the Hasakeh attack. Their subsequent trajectories and communications may have created intelligence opportunities.

"If Qurashi was planning to record a statement about the recent attacks, perhaps that created an opening," said Aron Lund, a fellow with Century International.

Iraq's prime minister on Thursday claimed credit for gathering the intelligence that led to one of the world's most wanted men.

How did he die?

According to the White House and US defence officials, Qurashi died when he detonated a bomb to avoid capture.

"He killed himself and his immediate family without fighting, even as we attempted to call for his surrender and offered him a path to survive," the head of US Central Command, General Kenneth McKenzie, said.

The visible damage to the three-level house -- including burn marks and a collapsed part of the roof -- tend to confirm at least one explosion occurred inside the house.

Neighbours told AFP they heard explosions but US official statements are at this time the only version of what happened inside the house.

US Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Qurashi's fingerprint identification was done on site but did not explicitly say whether US forces had taken the body away or left it behind.

A photo purporting to show the slain IS leader's face that circulated on social media could not be authenticated by AFP and does not provide clear information as to how he died.

Who else was there?

US officials have said at least three civilians died during the raid, in addition to Qurashi and two others outside the house on whom the special forces returned fire.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said it had reports of 13 dead, 12 of them killed inside the house.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said Qurashi had two wives, both of whom were killed in the raid, together with the IS leader's sister and her adult daughter.

He also said the bodies of four children were recovered, as well as two other incomplete bodies that may have been children's.

Save the Children said at least six children, including two infants, were killed during the raid.

Abdel Rahman said one of Qurashi's senior associates was also killed.

One of Qurashi's wounded children was treated by civil defence but then transferred to an unknown location by forces connected to HTS.

Why in Idlib?

Qurashi had been hiding in a town far from IS's area of operations and under the control of HTS, a rival jihadist group.

Yet analysts argue it is hardly surprising he was tracked down to an area far from IS's heartland, which covers the arid expanses straddling the Iraqi-Syria border between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

His predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was also killed in Idlib province, about 15 kilometres (nine miles) away, in October 2019.

"Idlib is a messy war zone full of displaced people, with little proper policing and no real state structures or record-keeping," said Lund.

Hassan Hassan, who authored a book on IS, said Idlib is safer for an IS leader than the regions in western Iraq or eastern Syria where anti-IS forces have acquired years of experience tracking down jihadists.

"It is a hostile area for IS because its rivals dominate that region of northern Syria, but it is precisely the right place to hide where nobody expects you to be there," he said.

Hassan, who is also a Newlines analyst, said close Qurashi aides had been running the group's operations and building businesses in the area for two years.

What next for IS?

The week-long attack on the Ghwayran prison IS launched two weeks earlier had raised fears of a resurgence, nearly three years after IS lost the last scraps of its "caliphate".

For Hassan, however, the prison attack was "not part of a strategic comeback, nor an indication of recovery".

"The group remains weak and exposed," he said, adding that Thursday's raid was further evidence of growing efficiency by the US and allied forces tasked with tracking down IS leaders.

Qurashi was largely invisible during his time at the helm but the group, which has not yet acknowledged his death, will nonetheless have to find a new "caliph".

Experts say there are few obvious names for a successor but that the next IS leader will most likely hail from the same area.

Qurashi was an ethnic Turkmen from the Iraqi city of Tal Afar who played a key role in the campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Yazidi minority in 2014.

O.Hofer--NZN