Islamic State Says One Of Its Senior Leaders Has Been Killed

He crossed the border and joined al-Qaida in Iraq, a precursor to IS, after the 2003 USA -led invasion.

The spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) armed group, Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, has been killed in Syrian province of Aleppo, according to an ISIL-linked website.

It said he died after a “long voyage crowned by sacrifice” and vowed “revenge” at the hands of a “new generation born unto the Islamic State”.

Hisham al-Hashimi, a security analyst who advises the Iraqi government on Islamic State, said Adnani was injured in a coalition strike on August 17 near al-Rai, north of Aleppo, where Islamic State is fighting Turkish and US-backed Syrian rebels. He said the USA was still assessing the results of the airstrike.

Adnani was originally from the western Syrian province of Idlib and joined the jihadist movement in Iraq where he served now slain Al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and held several positions.

Amaq did not say how Adnani was “martyred”.

Last week, Turkish forces, together with Syrian rebels, drove out the IS from Jarablus, on Syria’s border with Turkey.

It has also lost some of its most senior commanders and founding members over the past year, including its “minister of war” Omar al-Shishani, feared Iraqi militant Shaker Wuhayeb, also known as Abu Wahib, as well as a top finance official known by several names, including Abu Ali Al-Anbari. He has also called for attacks in Western countries, telling Muslims in France on occasion to attack “the filthy French” in any way they could, including “crush them with your vehicle”.

He has been the chief propagandist for the ultra-hardline jihadi group since he declared in a June 2014 statement that it was establishing a modern-day caliphate spanning large swaths of territory it had seized in Iraq and Syria.

There is a $5 million reward on his head under the US “Rewards for Justice” programme.