Beirut, Aug 3 (AP) The Islamic State group announced Thursday the death of its little-known leader, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurayshi, who had been heading the extremist organization since November. It did not say when he was killed.

Al-Qurayshi is the fourth IS leader to be killed since the group was founded by Iraqi militant Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and declared a caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq in June 2014 before its defeat years later.

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IS spokesman Abu Huthaifa al-Ansari said in an audio message that al-Qurayshi “was martyred” in rebel-held northwestern Syria. He added that al-Qurayshi was killed by members of Syria's al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham when they tried to detain him in the province of Idlib.

“He fought them until he succumbed to his wounds,” al-Ansari said of al-Qurayshi, adding that the al-Qaida-linked group detained some IS members who were with the late leader, including Abu Omar al-Muhajir, another spokesman, and that they are still being held.

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In April, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkish intelligence agents had killed al-Qurayshi in northern Syria — a statement that IS denied.

IS founder al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid by Americans troops in northwestern Syria in October 2019. The group's leader after that, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was also killed in a U.S. raid in February 2022, in northwestern Syria. His successor was killed in southern Syria later that year. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)