In many ways, the US raid which killed Isis’s chief on Thursday was like experiencing déjà vu. Like his predecessor in 2019, Isis caliph Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was killed in Idlib province, an opposition-held pocket of northwest Syria.
Al-Qurashi too was holed up with his family in a house along the Turkish border. In fact, it was just 15 kilometres up the road from the last hiding spot of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Like al-Baghdadi, he too blew himself up to evade capture.
The news came out in jagged disclosures before President Joe Biden also declared victory, albeit in a less bombastic manner than his predecessor Donald Trump who infamously claimed Baghdadi “died like a dog… whimpering, screaming and crying”.
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