Turkey had announced that it had killed the ISIL leader in April.
(Al Jazeera) – The ISIL (ISIS) group has confirmed the death of its leader, Abu Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi, and named Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi as his replacement.
The group said on Thursday that its leader had been killed in “direct clashes” with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group in Idlib province in rebel-held northwestern Syria.
The announcement was made by an ISIL spokesman in a recorded message on its channels on the Telegram messaging app, without specifying when he was killed.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in April that Turkish intelligence forces had killed the leader in Syria.
After a meteoric rise in Iraq and Syria in 2014 that saw it conquer vast swathes of territory, ISIL saw its self-proclaimed “caliphate” collapse under a wave of offensives.
The extremist group’s austere and terror-ridden rule was marked by beheadings and mass shootings.
