The Islamic State has admitted that senior leader Abu Omar al-Shishani, who was known as Omar the Chechen, is dead, months after the US claimed he was killed by an air strike.
The Amaq news agency, which is linked to the so-called Islamic State, said Shishani was killed in combat in the Iraqi town of Al-Shirqat, south of Mosul.
This report contradicts the Pentagon’s claim that he had died following a US air strike in north-eastern Syria in early March.
The Pentagon’s account was confirmed at the time by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and by officials in Washington.
Shishani, whose real name was Tarkhan Batirashvili, was a key military advisor to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
He was one of the world’s most wanted jihadists, last year the US offered a $5 million reward for information that would help remove him from the battlefield, and the Pentagon considered him to be Islamic State’s “minister for war.”
Shishani was born in the Soviet Union in 1986. He fought as a rebel in Chechnya before joining Georgia’s military in 2006.
He was discharged for medical reasons and spent more than a year in jail in Georgia for weapons possession before leaving for Syria and joining Islamic State.
