Someone in Daesh is preparing to “step up to try to lead the group” after the death of its latest leader al- Qurashi, said Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby at a presser on Thursday.
"We are going to assume that they are going to try to replace him. This is an organization that wants to reconstitute. They want to grow, they want to get back to the heyday that they had back in 2014," Kirby said.
He added that the terrorists “would like to continue to attack the West, even our homeland.”
According to the spokesman, the US military planned to capture the Daesh leader alive. His identity was confirmed, “through fingerprints and DNA analysis.”
“Abdullah had a different approach than al-Baghdadi. He was a more hands-on guy, he was more involved in the operations than Baghdadi was... so we will see how they try to react to his loss, but we are going to assume they are going to try to keep going,” Kirby said.
On Thursday morning, Biden said that Daesh leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was killed on Wednesday in a US-led raid in northwest Syria. It was said to be the biggest US military operation in Syria since the 2019 raid that killed the former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Qurayshi blew himself up in his house after being detected by US forces, and the explosion resulted in multiple civilian casualties. There were no casualties among US personnel, according to the Pentagon. The operation involved two dozen special forces, several military helicopters and drones, according to the New York Times.
Biden also posted a photo on his Twitter account, showing him, Vice President Kamala Harris, and members of the president's national security team watching the operation.
* Daesh (ISIS) is a terrorist group outlawed in Russia and many other countries