Abu Omar al-Shishani, one of the Islamic State’s top commanders, has died of his wounds suffered from a U.S. airstrike in Syria earlier this month, according to the Pentagon and activist groups in the region.
“We assess he’s dead,” U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria, wrote in an email.
U.S. warplanes and drones targeted Shishani, along with a group of Islamic State fighters outside the Syrian town of Shidadi in a series of strikes on March 4. Last week, Pentagon officials said they were assessing the outcome of the strike, but could not confirm that he was dead.
Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen and by his birth name, Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili, is a Georgian by birth and fought with the Georgian Army during their brief war against the Russians in 2008. By 2012, the red-bearded Shishani had found his way to Syria where he fought with a number of opposition groups against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. In 2013, Shishani joined the Islamic State where he quickly grew to prominence as a capable battlefield commander and strategist.
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff, WashingtonPost.com, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Mar. 15, 2016
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