IS spokesman killed in Syria in major blow to militant group

Russia’s defense ministry said today in a statement that Abu Muhammad al-Adnani was among roughly 40 ISIS fighters killed when a Russian Su-34 bomber struck a large group of ISIS militants in Maaratat-Um-Haush in northern Aleppo province.

Russian Federation intervened directly in the war in Syria last September, sending warplanes to back the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

According to a statement from ISIS’ Amaq news agency, al-Adnani died while inspecting military operations in the area of Aleppo, Syria.

Russia´s military said one of its air strikes had killed Adnani in a bombing raid Tuesday that left up to 40 Daesh militants dead – a claim dismissed by U.S. officials as “a joke”.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon said it had targeted Adnani in airstrikes in the city of al Bab, northeast of Aleppo, but was unable to confirm he had been killed.

A USA counter-terrorism official who monitors ISIS said Adnani’s death will hurt the militants “in the area that increasingly concerns us as the group loses more and more of its caliphate and its financial base … and turns to mounting and inspiring more attacks in Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere”.

Al-Adnani’s death is a major blow to the extremist group, which has been on the retreat in Syria and Iraq.

In an online edition of the Islamic State’s newspaper al-Naba, distributed hours after al-Adnani’s death was confirmed, the group told its fighters to keep fighting.

Another US official said the strike was carried out by a Predator drone that fired a Hellfire missile at a auto in which Al Adnani was believed to have been travelling.

A US defense official said Adnani was directly involved in recruiting foreign fighters and also directed Islamic State’s major attacks outside of its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

Adnani was one of the last living senior members, along with self-appointed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who founded the group and stunned the Middle East by seizing huge tracts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

“And I’m not going to get into intelligence or operational matters, but we have already confirmed for you all that we conducted a precision strike yesterday targeting Adnani near al-Bab, Syria”.

The coalition had been actively looking for Adnani for some time, he said. But even as the United States has focused much of its counterterrorism operations on targeted strikes against terrorist leaders, analysts say the jury is still out on whether such strikes have been truly effective at curbing groups as a whole.

A Syrian national born Taha Sobhi Falaha, al-Adnani was a core member of ISIS, considered by some as second only to leader Abu Bakir al-Baghdadi.

However, Russia has been assisting the Syrian government’s military in the region, where different stretches of land are controlled by a hodgepodge of forces including the regime of Bashar Assad, ISIS, Kurdish militias and USA -backed rebels.

Spokesman Peter Cook described the terrorist as a “principal architect of Isil’s external operations”.