The Turkish secret services would have “neutralized” yesterday Saturday the alleged head of the Islamic State (IS), Abu Hussein al Qureishi. This was revealed by the Turkish president himself, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during an interview with the TRT channel on Sunday.
The anti-terrorist operation would have been carried out in Jindires, a Syrian town five kilometers from the Turkish border, in Afrin. According to the first information, the jihadist leader would have died from the detonation of his own explosives. Turkish intelligence, MIT, “had been on his trail for a long time,” according to Erdogan. According to some sources, Syrian Islamist militias collaborating with the occupation by the Turkish army would have participated in the operation, in a farm that had previously been used as a Koranic school.
Qureishi, of whom little is known, is not the first heir to the “Caliph” Al Baghdadi eliminated in the same rebel zone of Syria. His predecessor, Abu al Hasan al Hashemi, died in a similar way – blowing himself up when harassed by Syrian forces aligned with Ankara – last October, so Qureishi had not even been at the head of the organization for six months, very weakened .
He is the third IS chief to be eliminated in just over a year, as the US claimed responsibility, in February 2022, for the death of Abu Ibrahim al Qureishi in his hideout in northern Idlib, a province under Turkish military tutelage in for the most part. This same April, in two different operations, the US claims to have eliminated two other high-ranking IS officials in Syria, “responsible for operations in Europe.”
Erdogan, who faces the polls in two Sundays, is in the middle of an electoral campaign, the closest in the last twenty years. Whoever wins, profound changes are expected in Turkey’s policy towards Syria, where Bashar al-Assad is being rehabilitated by his Arab neighbors after a dozen years of ostracism. However, in the quadripartite meetings in Moscow – with the participation of Iran – a grown Assad refuses to negotiate anything with Ankara if there is no commitment with a date for the withdrawal of Turkish troops in Syria.
The “neutralization” of Al Qureishi – according to military jargon – comes just three days before Ebrahim Raisi lands in Damasco, in what will be the first official visit by an Iranian president to his Syrian ally since 2010.