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A faded flag of the Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria, June 12, 2018. The Islamic State on Tuesday, March 10, 2022, announced that it has a new leader, but provided little information on the true identity or background of the man who will now oversee the global terrorist organization.
Image: Ivor Prickett/The New York Times
BEIRUT — The Islamic State group announced Thursday that it has a new leader, but provided little information on the true identity or background of the man who will now oversee the global terrorist organization.
Al-Qurayshi detonated some explosives during the raid, U.S. officials said, killing himself and others in the house.
The Islamic State group did not immediately comment on the raid and only confirmed the death of the former leader in the audio message.
The message said that he had designated his successor before he died, but otherwise offered scant information about the new leader, providing neither his real name nor an image of him, and making it hard to draw conclusions about his outlook or how he might lead the group.
Withholding that information will most likely diminish the chances that the new leader can be hunted down and killed. Both of his predecessors were killed by U.S. commandos in northwestern Syria, where they had been trying to live off the grid and communicate with underlings only via trusted courier to avoid detection.
Though the group appears to be at its lowest ebb in Iraq in years, terrorism experts caution that governments have written the Islamic State group off before, only to see it come roaring back when conditions gave it an opening.
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©2019 New York Times News Service
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