One of Islamic States most infamous commanders may have been killed during targeted strikes by the United States in Syria.
Abu Omar al-Shishani, described by the pentagon as the groups ‘Minister of War’ was the target of a strike near the town of al-Shaddadi.
The strike involved wave after wave of manned and unmanned aircraft targeting Shishani, a U.S. official said in a statement recently.
Al-Shishani, whose given name is Tarkhan Batirashvili, joined the Islamic State after leaving an elite unit in the Georgian Military and is said to be a close military advisor to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Al-Shishani is believed to have once fought in military operations as a rebel in Chechnya before joining Georgia’s army in 2006 but was discharged two years later for medical reasons. He was then said to have been arrested in 2010 for weapons possession, subsequently spending a year in jail, after which he left Georgia in 2012 for Istanbul and then later for Syria.
In 2014 the U.S. government placed al-Shishani on a list of global terrorists, placing a $5 million bounty on his head for anyone who could bring forward information and making him one of the United States most wanted men.
The Pentagon believes that al-Shishani was sent to the town of al-Shaddadi to bolster Islamic State troops after they suffered a series of strikes from U.S backed forces leading to the capture of the town by the Syrian Arab Coalition from IS militants last month.
Whilst there was optimism that al-Shishani had been killed in the strikes there was an unwillingness to declare him dead. Two U.S. officials acknowledged that al-Shishani’s death was not certain and one official even limited himself to saying that al-Shishani was just a target of the strike.
There have been false reports of his death on at least three occasions. Including one in which the president of Chechen posted a picture of a dead man online that ended up not being al-Shishani.
Officials believe that al-Shishani was likely killed alongside 12 other Islamic State fighters in the strikes.