Turkey kills suspected ISIS leader in Syria: Erdogan

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday announced that Turkish forces had killed the suspected leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) during an operation in Syria the day before.

Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has been following suspected ISIS leader Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi for “a long time,” said Erdogan during a televised interview.

“This is the first time I am telling this here, this person was neutralized in an operation carried out by MIT yesterday,” Erdogan told state-owned TRT Turk.

The Turkish President did not reveal the location of Qurayshi’s killing, nor the magnitude of the MIT operation.

ISIS has been posing a threat to the region for nearly a decade, and is currently under a crackdown by the global coalition and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). On Sunday, the SDF announced arresting an ISIS leader and three other members of the militant group in Deir ez-Zor, eastern Syria. 

SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami took to twitter after Erdogan's announcement and claimed that Qurayshi was killed in Jindires, adding that he had been protected by Turkish forces stationed there. 

In fact, the ISIS figure Abu Husin al-Quraishi that Erdogan referred to his killing, was stationed in a military post belonging to the Turkish-backed Ahrar al-Sharqiya mercenary group and was killed in Jindires, Afrin. There is nothing new about this incident except for the end…

— Farhad Shami (@farhad_shami) April 30, 2023

The Afrin region, where Jindires is located, is historically a Kurdish area, but Kurdish residents have been subjected to discrimination and violence since Turkey and its Syrian allies seized control in 2018, ousting Kurdish armed forces.

ISIS has carried out multiple attacks and over 10 suicide bombings in Turkey since 2014, according to Turkish state media Anadolu Agency.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that ISIS had carried out 43 operations in the month of April, killing 38 civilians, 11 members of the internal security forces (Asayish), and 46 members of Syrian regime forces and Iranian-backed militia. 

From running a so-called caliphate controlling swathes of land in Iraq and Syria to being reduced to disjointed members performing hit-and-run attacks, ISIS still poses a security threat through kidnapping and bombings.

An estimated 6,000 to 10,000 ISIS fighters are spread across Syria and Iraq, according to the Pentagon’s latest quarterly report covering anti-ISIS operations from October through December 2022.

Updated at 11:05am