Yesterday (November 30), ISIS announced that its leader (Abu al-Hassan al-Qureishi) had been killed and replaced by a new leader. It turns out that he was killed about a month and a half ago, on October 15 in the city of Jassim in southern Syria (Previous ISIS leaders operated from northern Syria). The United States Central Command (Centcom) announced that he was “killed in mid-October by members of the Free Syrian Army,” opponents of the Assad regime.
However, it is known that on October 15, the Syrian army operated against “terrorist infrastructure” in Jassim. During it, it was reported that a large number of ISIS operatives were casualties and arrested in the army’s activity against a compound of ISIS houses in the city. It is very possible that the ISIS leader was killed in this compound and that the Syrian army did not know/ understand who was killed…
In the photos: The complex of houses in Jassim where the ISIS leader was apparently killed:
It should be noted that today, it is difficult to track the identity of the general leadership of ISIS. It is not clear if this is an organization operating under one orderly operative mechanism, as was the case in the past. Or that these are different groups, which are unrelated to each other, and the actions are independent in their scope but share the same extreme ideology. The second option is the more likely. Ideology, as we know, cannot be eliminated or dismantled, and the ideology of ISIS still attracts quite a few supporters worldwide.
In the arena of Syria and Lebanon, on which we usually focus our research, ISIS operates even more strongly in the form of terrorist cells of various sizes and carries out a lot of activity.
