BEIRUT — The Islamic State’s spokesman and overseer of external terrorist operations, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, was killed in the Syrian province of Aleppo, the group’s news outlet reported on Tuesday.
A founding member of the group, Adnani, a 39-year-old Syrian, was its chief propagandist, running an operation that put out slickly produced videos of beheadings and massacres that shocked the world and sent a rush of recruits running to join the group in Syria.
Accounts from arrested members of the Islamic State confirmed Adnani’s role as an operational leader as well. He oversaw the group’s external operations division, responsible for recruiting operatives around the world and instigating or organizing them to carry out attacks that have included Paris, Brussels, and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Islamic State’s news outlet, Amaq, said Adnani had been killed while checking up on the group’s military operations in Aleppo province.
It was unclear what force might have been behind his death, however. In the northern part of Aleppo province, near the Turkish border, the Islamic State is currently under attack by a long list of antagonists: directly by Turkish, American, and Russian airstrikes, by US- and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels, and by US-backed Kurdish rebels and their Arab allies.
It was Adnani who, in September 2014, released an audio statement calling on Muslims living in the West to strike out wherever and however they could.
“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,’’ Adnani said in the recording.
He warned Americans and Europeans that they would come to suffer for fighting the Islamic State.
“You will pay the price when your economies collapse,’’ he declared. “You will pay the price when your sons are sent to wage war against us, and they return to you as disabled amputees, or inside coffins, or mentally ill. You will pay the price as you are afraid of traveling to any land. You will pay the price as you walk on your streets, turning right and left, fearing the Muslims. You will not feel secure even in your bedrooms.’’
Even as the Islamic State has lost territory on the battlefields in Iraq and Syria, it has continued to press its terror attacks abroad seemingly unabated. In May, Adnani declared: “Do you think, America, that defeat is by the loss of towns or territory? Were we defeated when we lost the cities in Iraq and retreated to the desert without a city or a land?’’ He offered an answer: “No, true defeat is losing the will and desire to fight.’’
