Islamic State (ISIS) news agency, A’maq, reported today Islamic State official spokesman and emir of ISIS in Syria, Abu Muhammad Al Adnani Al Shami, was killed in Syria.
According to the announcement posted on the agency’s website and Telegram channel, a "military source” told A’maq “the martyrdom of Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al Adnani, spokesman of the Islamic State, [was killed] during an inspection of his to repel the military campaigns against Aleppo."
The circumstances of Al Adnani’s killing were not immediately clear. However, “Al Adnani’s death is expected to generate a ripple of reactions, including threats for retaliation, from ISIS and its supporters,” said the Middle East Media Research Institute, noting, “In the last two years, Al Adnani rose in public attention especially with his repeated calls for attacks against the West."
In September 2014, Al Adnani urged jihadists to use vehicles to run over “filthy French disbelievers.”
“If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way, however it may be,” Al Adnani said in his statement to followers. “Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.”
Al Adnani was ISIS’s main conduit for the dissemination of official messages, including ISIS’s declaration of the creation of an Islamic Caliphate. He also was one of the first foreign fighters to oppose Coalition Forces in Iraq before becoming the jihadi group’s spokesman. The US Department of State designated Al Adnani a Specially Designated Global Terrorist pursuant to Executive Order 13224 on August 18, 2014, and has a $5 million bounty on his head.
Two weeks before 31-year-old Tunisian Muslim emigre Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel massacred at least 84 people when he drove a rented 19-ton Renault truck for more than a mile along a Nice, France beachfront roadway filled with Bastille Day celebration crowds, a video was released using a Telegram channel managed by French ISIS fighters, likely in Mosul, in which an ISIS fighter called for French jihadists to use large trucks to carry out mass killings of “infidels.”
Within 48 hours of the attack, ISIS claimed Bouhlel as one of its foot soldiers.
The ISIS fighter said in his video posted on Telegram June 29, "Go get a truck” … After [Al Adnani] “made his speech [calling upon ISIS supporters to carry out attacks in the West] … In France, you have access to gas tanks, to trucks, and to many products that can cause a disaster, Allah be praised. We are not asking you to carry out a nuclear attack. Just kill five infidels, and end up a martyr. That would be preferable than you coming here and committing martyrdom, killing 100 people.”
House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said Al Adnani encouraged “lone wolf attacks against the West,” telling extremists everywhere to target “a disbelievingAmerican or European."
“The reported death of ISIS leader Muhammad Al Adnani represents a significant blow to the greatest terror threat to the homeland," McCaul said. "But as we have seen time and again, someone will take his place and continue to inspire people to attack innocent civilians across the globe. The Obama administration, conversely, is just not doing enough to destroy ISIS. Abroad, it is not prosecuting the war against ISIS aggressively enough; at home, it has done next to nothing to directly counter the appeal of ISIS’ message that is infecting at-risk Americans. I urge the administration to redouble its efforts by denying these extremists their safe havens in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere while more aggressively countering jihadist radicalization efforts in the United States.”
For more Homeland Security Today reports on Al Adnani, click here:
