Turkish forces have killed the leader of the Islamic State group during an operation in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said today.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan told TRT Turk television in an interview that the IS leader, code-named Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi, was killed in a strike conducted on Sunday.
Erdogan said the Turkish intelligence agency, MIT, had been following him “for a long time.”
“We will continue our struggle against terrorist organisations without discriminating against any of them,” Erdogan said in the interview.
Turkey has conducted numerous operations against IS and Kurdish groups along the Syrian border, capturing or killing suspected militants. The country controls large swaths of territory in northern Syria following a series of land incursions to drive Kurdish groups away from the Turkish-Syrian border.