the terrorist group Islamic State (IS) announcementupon the death of its leader, Abu al Hasan al Qurashiwhich was nominated by the organization in March and nominated Abu al Hussein al Hussein al Qurashi as the new ‘caliph’, according to an audio broadcast by the Al Furqan audiovisual production company, linked to the jihadists.

“I am sorry to announce to the Muslims and the soldiers of the Islamic Caliphate the death of the prince of believers, Abu al Hasan al Hashemi al Qurashi, during a battle where he was fighting the enemies of Allah,” IS spokesman Abu Omar al-Muhager said in the audio.

Furthermore, he announced that, after a meeting of the organization’s leaders, it was agreed to “appoint Abu al Hussein al Husseini al Qurashi as Caliph of the Muslims”, in reference to the new leader’s nickname, whose real name is unknown and his role in IS so far.

The spokesman did not provide details on how or where the leader of the organization, who had remained in the shadows after being named last March, died after his predecessor died in early February in a US operation in northwest Syria.

The latest information on the deceased IS leader was offered in June by the Turkish news portal Odatv, which assured that the caliph had been arrested in Istanbul a month earlier in an international operation prepared in secret, although this was not officially confirmed.

This is the second death in a year of a leader of the Islamic State: the previous one, Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al Qurashi, died on February 3 in an operation by US special forces in a house in the Syrian province of Idlib, a stronghold of the opposition Syrian army in the north-west of the country.

Al Qurashi was proclaimed caliph by the Islamic State in 2019, after the death of his predecessor, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in another US operation, but during his time at the head of an organization weakened and stripped of the vast territories it had to the conquests in Syria and Iraq his face was not known and his voice was not heard.

Since Al Baghdadi’s death, the leaders of the Islamic State have been nicknamed Al Qurashi, in reference to the tribe of Quraish (or Quraishiti, in Spanish), to which the Prophet Mohammed belonged, and which the last two leaders have used to lend legitimacy.