Islamic State says its spokesman killed in Syria -Amaq News

BEIRUT, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, one of the jihadist group's longest-serving and most prominent leaders, has been killed in Aleppo in Syria, its Amaq News Agency reported on Tuesday in a statement distributed by the group's supporters. Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency reported that Adnani was killed “while surveying the operations to repel the military campaigns against Aleppo.” Islamic State holds territory in the province of Aleppo, but not in the city where rebels are fighting Syrian government forces. He was a Syrian who was born in the northern province of Idlib and is believed to have been in his late 30s. Recent advances by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, and by Syrian rebels backed by Turkey, have made inroads into Islamic State holdings in Aleppo province, cutting them off from the Turkish border and supply lines along it. In Washington, a U.S. defense official said in response to reports of al-Adnani’s death that a U.S. airstrike on Tuesday targeted “an ISIL senior leader” in the Syrian city of al-Bab, which is northeast of Aleppo. U.S. Department of State/REUTERS

He had been the chief propagandist for the ultra-hardline jihadist group since he declared in a June 2014 statement that it was establishing a modern-day caliphate spanning swaths of territory it had seized in Iraq and neighboring Syria.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant says its official spokesman, Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, has been killed in Syria's Aleppo Governorate. The group's statement, distributed by Amaq News Agency, did not say how al-Adnani was killed.