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A Death In Idlib: The Killing of the Top ISIS Leader and Its Impact
On 3 February, U.S. commandos raided a house in Syria’s Idlib province, killing Abdullah Qardash, head of the Islamic State’s core group in the Levant.
- In this Q&A, Crisis Group experts Jerome Drevon and Dareen Khalifa explore the implications of the ISIS leader’s demise.
Who was the ISIS leader killed yesterday in north-western Syria?
Abdullah Qardash, an Iraqi national also known as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, became ISIS leader on 31 October 2019, one week after his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a U.S. raid in Idlib province in north-western Syria.
Qardash was a…