The alleged leader of the jihadist organization Islamic State (IS), who was killed Saturday in northwest Syria, detonated the explosives he had been carrying during a Turkish intelligence operation to neutralize the jihadist, Turkish state media reported today.

Last night the president of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that the “alleged leader” of IS was “neutralized” last Saturday in Syria. “The alleged leader of Daesh, who had the alias Abu Hussein al-Qurasi, was neutralized during an operation carried out yesterday (i.e. the day before Saturday) by the MIT (Turkish intelligence) in Syria,” said the head of the Turkish state during an interview he gave to the state television network TRT Türk. Erdogan clarified that the Turkish spy agency had been monitoring the IS leader “for a long time”.

According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, al Quraysh, he was locked inside a house which had an “underground bunker”. This residence was located a few kilometers north of the community of Jadairis, in the Syrian region of Afrin (northwest), about ten kilometers from the Syrian-Turkish border.

Images broadcast by several Turkish media outlets, including TRT Türk, show a two-story house surrounded by fields, with part of the house’s walls torn down by explosions.

According to Anadolu, Turkish forces called on al-Qurasi to surrender, but he did not respond. MIT members then blew out side walls and doors at the rear of the residence to rush inside. The leader of the jihadist group then detonated the explosives he had strapped on, Anadolu reported.

The Islamic State announced on November 30 the death of its previous leader, Abu Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurasi, without specifying how he died. He was replaced by Abu Al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurasi, the jihadist group had added at the time.

Despite the repeated military defeats it suffered from being attacked everywhere and the loss of the territories it held in Syria and Iraq, IS continues to carry out deadly attacks.

At least 41 people, including 24 civilians, were killed on April 16 in Syria in two attacks attributed to the jihadist group, targeting truffle pickers and livestock farmers.

In early April, the US military announced that it had killed another IS leader responsible for attacks in Europe, which it identified as Khaled Eid Ahmad al-Jabouri.

In October 2019, Washington announced the death of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a US operation. Two of his successors were killed in Syria in February and November 2022.