[ALMANAR.LB] Top commander of the so-called 'Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
of Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL) takfiri
...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who most be killed...
group Omar al-Shishani has been "clinically dead" for several days after a US air strike in northern Syria, a monitoring group said Sunday.
"Shishani is not able to breathe on his own and is using machines. He has been clinically dead for several days," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
| "Using machines" -- plural. So ventilator plus dialysis plus some infusion pumps. That's a start... |
A US official said on March 9 that Shishani "likely died" in a barrage of US-led air strikes on March 4 in northeastern Syria. The official branded Shishani "the ISIL equivalent of the secretary of defense".
Abdel Rahman at the time said the terrorist had been "seriously injured" in the strike on his convoy, but that he had not died.
Shishani was one of the ISIL leaders, allegedly most wanted by Washington, which put a $5 million bounty on his head. Shishani comes from the Pankisi Gorge, a mainly ethnic Chechen region of ex-Soviet state Georgia.
As early as May 2013, when ISIL was just emerging in Syria, he was appointed the group's military commander for the north of the country.