Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Wed 05/28/2025 View Tue 05/27/2025 View Mon 05/26/2025 View Sun 05/25/2025 View Sat 05/24/2025 View Fri 05/23/2025 View Thu 05/22/2025
2016-07-14 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
ISIS-linked agency confirms Shishani is dead
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A top ISIS group commander, Omar Al-Shishani, has been killed in Iraq, the myrmidon-linked Amaq agency said on Wednesday.

Citing a "military source," Amaq said Shishani was killed "in the town of Sharqat as he took part in repelling the military campaign on the city of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
," referring to the last ISIS-held city in Iraq.

Amaq did not specify when Shishani was killed, but the loss of the commander is a significant blow to the myrmidon group, which has suffered a string of setbacks in Iraq this year.

The Pentagon announced in March that American forces had killed Shishani and said his death would likely hamper ISIS’s ability to carry out operations inside and outside of Iraq and Syria.

But it did not specify how or where he was killed.

US officials previously said Shishani "likely died" in an air strike, but reports surfaced that he had survived.

Shishani was a fierce, battle-hardened warlord with roots in Georgia and a thick red beard who was one of the most notorious faces of ISIS.

Shishani, whose nom de guerre means "Omar the Chechen," was one of the ISIS leaders most wanted by Washington which had put a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head.

His exact rank was unclear, but US officials had branded him as "equivalent of the secretary of defence" for the myrmidon group.

Shishani came from the former Soviet state of Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge region, which is populated mainly by ethnic Chechens.

He fought as a Chechen rebel against Russian forces before joining the Georgian military in 2006, and fought Russian forces again in Georgia in 2008.

He later resurfaced in northern Syria as the commander of a group of imported muscle, and became a big shot within ISIS.

ISIS overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but has since lost significant ground to Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes, training and other assistance.

The Sunni hard boy group has responded to the battlefield setbacks by striking civilians, particularly Shiites, and experts have warned there may be more bombings as the Death Eaters continue to lose ground.

Posted by Fred 2016-07-14 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11128 views ]  Top
 File under: Islamic State 

09:43 Mullah Richard
09:27 Warthog
09:11 Mercutio
09:07 AlmostAnonymous5839
08:52 Matt
08:24 Matt
08:20 SteveS
07:43 Procopius2k
07:42 BrerRabbit
07:42 Procopius2k
07:39 Procopius2k
07:36 Procopius2k
07:35 Procopius2k
07:34 trailing wife
07:31 Procopius2k
07:30 NN2N1
07:22 NN2N1
07:18 trailing wife
07:14 Richard Aubrey
07:10 NN2N1
07:09 Besoeker
07:03 NN2N1
06:58 NN2N1
06:58 Besoeker









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com