ISIS leader Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi killed in battle

The Islamic State jihadist group leader Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi has been killed in battle and announced a replacement. A spokesman for the group said Hashimi, an Iraqi, was killed “in combat with enemies of God”, without elaborating on the date of his death or the circumstances.

Qurashi refers to a tribe of the Prophet Mohammed, from whom IS leaders must claim descent. After a meteoric rise in Iraq and Syria in 2014 that saw it conquer vast swathes of territory, IS saw its self-proclaimed “caliphate” collapse under a wave of offensives. IS’s previous leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, was killed in February this year in a US raid in Idlib province in northern Syria. His predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed, also in Idlib, in October 2019.