Global ISIS Leader Targeted and Possibly Killed in US Airstrike

The U.S. military targeted the global leader of ISIS in an airstrike in Somalia late last month but cannot confirm whether he was killed, three U.S. officials said.

The US government has publicly identified Abdulqadir Mumin as the head of the ISIS branch in Somaliabut two U.S. officials say that last year he quietly became the terrorist group’s global leader.

US Africa Command released a statement on May 31, saying he had conducted an airstrike against ISIS militants in a remote area 81 km (50 miles) southeast of Bosaso, Somalia, and killed three militants. The AFRICOM statement did not say who the US targeted, or who was killed. AFRICOM reported that no civilians were killed in the attack.

Three North American officials now say that Mumin was the target of this operation, although they do not have confirmation of his death.

A senior administration official confirmed that the U.S. carried out a strike against a key ISIS target in Somalia, but declined to provide the name of the individual and said the U.S. is still working to verify the outcome.

A senior defense official says ISIS in Somalia is relatively small, with just 100 to 200 fighters in total, all located in northern Somalia. But there are other small ISIS groups in parts of Africa, including Libya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique.

ISIS still has thousands of fighters around the world, mainly in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria, according to US intelligence agencies.

But because the U.S. has been effective against ISIS leadership in Iraq and Syria, ISIS leaders see Africa as “a place where they should invest, where they are more permissive and able to operate better and more freely, and they want to expand ISIS.” cell there. So they brought the caliph to that region,” the senior defense official said. Cells around Africa have expanded due to strategic guidance from ISIS leadership, the official added.

The official said that ISIS militants in Somalia operate more effectively in certain aspects than other terrorist networks that are active in the country, including evading the FBI and Interpol and sharing their tactics, techniques and procedures with each other, such as the financing.

The US says Mumin is responsible for deadly attacks across Somalia over the past decade, including the murder of a judicial official in his home in 2019 and the capture and months-long occupation of a town in the Puntland region in 2016.

In 2016, the US declared him a specially designated global terrorist, saying he posed a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism that threaten the safety of US citizens or US national security, foreign policy or the economy.

The fact that Mumin took on the role of ISIS’s latest global chief was not widely known, two US officials say. He succeeded Abu al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, who was killed in combat in Syria in late 2022. The two previous global heads of ISIS, including its best-known leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, committed suicide when they were cornered during US military strikes.