Senior IS commander dies of wounds from US strike

Associated Press

BAGHDAD

Omar al-Shishani, a top Islamic State commander who was a magnet for fighters from the former Soviet Union, has died of wounds suffered in a U.S. airstrike in Syria, a senior Iraqi intelligence official and the head of a Syrian activist group said Tuesday.

Al-Shishani, who was wounded in a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, died Monday evening outside the Islamic State group’s main stronghold of Raqqa in Syria, the two told The Associated Press. A U.S. military spokesman confirmed the reports.

The IS-affiliated Aamaq news agency cited an unnamed source as denying that al-Shishani was wounded or killed, without providing any evidence that he was still alive.

The red-bearded al-Shishani, who was in his 30s, was one of the most prominent IS commanders, appearing in several online videos leading fighters into battle. He served as the top commander in Syria before being appointed to lead three elite units that carried out special missions in Syria and Iraq, according to Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar who closely follows the group.

Al-Shishani, whose real name was Tarkhan Batirashvili, was born in the Pankisi Valley, a predominantly ethnic Chechen region within the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

He first surfaced in Syria in 2013 with his nom de guerre, which means “Omar the Chechen” in Arabic, leading an al-Qaida-inspired group called “The Army of Emigrants and Partisans.”