US-led coalition says Syria strike killed ‘top IS cleric’
Turki al-Binali (pictured) ISIS’s top cleric, has been confirmed dead by US-led coalition forces, who killed him in an airstrike on May 31. He was a heavy recruiter for the group
Top ISIS cleric Turki al-Binali has been killed in an airstrike in Syria, the US-led coalition said Tuesday.
Though rumors have circulated since the strike, only now has there been official confirmation of his death, in a town near the Iraqi border.
‘Coalition forces killed Turki al-Binali, the self-proclaimed ‘Grand Mufti’ or chief cleric of ISIS in an air strike May 31 in Mayadeen, Syria,’ the coalition said in a statement.
Al-Binali was ‘a close confidant’ of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ‘had a central role in recruiting foreign terrorist fighters and provoking terrorist attacks around the world,’ said Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve.
He was born in Bahrain in 1984 to a wealthy family with close ties to the Al-Khalifas, Abu Dhabi’s royal family, the New York Times wrote in 2015.
The US Treasury described him as ‘a recruiter for ISIL foreign fighters’. ISIL is the Treasury’s chosen name for ISIS.
It said he ‘provides literature and fatwas for ISIL training camps and has written several pamphlets to recruit more fighters to ISIL, including the first call for Muslims to pledge allegiance to ISIL leader’.
The cleric was also listed under UN sanctions, which described him as having been chosen as ISIS’s ‘chief religious advisor’ in 2014.
Al-Binali had served as head of ISIS’s religious compliance police, as a recruiter of foreign fighters, and on a team of advisers to Baghdadi, according to the UN listing.
He was killed in a strike that came days after another US-led coalition air raid on Mayadeen that reportedly killed the founder of ISIS’s notorious Amaq propaganda agency.
The May 29 strike killed Rayan Mashaal, also known as Baraa Kadek, according to local Syrian activists, though the coalition has not yet confirmed that.
The ISIS deaths come as the group is under major pressure in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
Its fighters are surrounded in the Old City of Iraq’s Mosul, and under attack in their Syrian stronghold of Raqa from a US-backed alliance that has also seized four neighbourhoods of the city.
Russia said on Friday it was seeking to verify whether Baghdadi was killed when its warplanes hit the group’s leaders in a night raid in Syria last month.
More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests before spiralling into a war that has drawn in jihadists and foreign powers.
ISIS had previously confirmed the dead on June 1, according to Al Arabiya.
Syrian pro-government forces set up a checkpoint next to a mural reading ‘Islamic State’ in the northern town of Maskanah on June 5, 2017
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