The Islamic State group (ISIS) mentioned on Wednesday that its chief Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi has been killed in battle and introduced a alternative, AFP reported.

A spokesman for the phobia group mentioned Hashimi, an Iraqi, was killed “in fight with enemies of God”, with out elaborating on the date of his loss of life or the circumstances. Talking in an audio message, the spokesman recognized the group’s new chief as Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi.

Qurashi refers to a tribe of the Prophet Mohammed, from whom ISIS leaders should declare descent.

After a meteoric rise in Iraq and Syria in 2014 that noticed it conquer huge swathes of territory, ISIS noticed its self-proclaimed “caliphate” collapse beneath a wave of offensives.

It was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, however sleeper cells of the Sunni Muslim extremist group nonetheless perform assaults in each nations and declare assaults elsewhere on this planet.

ISIS’s earlier chief, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, was killed earlier this yr in a US raid in Idlib province in northern Syria.

His predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed, additionally in Idlib, in October 2019.