President Donald Trump says the United States knows "exactly" who the new leader of the Daesh terrorist group is. RNA - This comes after the US military last month conducted a special operations raid against former Daesh Takfiri chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
On Saturday, October 26, the Pentagon said a "high value ISIS (Daesh) target" - believed to be Baghdadi - was targeted during a top-secret operation in Syria's northwestern Idlib province earlier in the day.
Daesh released an audio tape online on Thursday, confirming that Baghdadi was killed during the raid and vowing revenge against the US.
The group also said that a successor to Baghdadi had been appointed whose name was Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi.
On Friday, Trump took to Twitter, saying that the terrorist group had a new leader, without giving further details.
ISIS has a new leader. We know exactly who he is!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2019
Meanwhile, Nathan Sales, the US counter-terrorism coordinator, said later in the day that Washington was researching the new leader of the group to determine his previous roles in the organization.
“Any time there is a leadership transition in the terrorist organization, we want to make sure that we have the latest information that we need to have to confront the threat,” Sales told a briefing.
An annual State Department report that Sales’ office issued Friday concluded that in spite of losing nearly all of its territory, the terror group continued to expand its presence globally in 2018, with new affiliates in Somalia and East Asia and through home-grown attacks.
“Additionally, battle-hardened terrorists headed home from the war zone in Syria and Iraq or traveled to third countries, posing new dangers,” Sales said in the report.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Sales said the US had returned and prosecuted 6 adult militants or Daesh supporters, adding that 14 children had been brought back and were being “rehabilitated and reintegrated.”
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