Washington : He cannot confirm his death, The US military targets the global leader of ISIS in Somalia

The American network NBC News said on Saturday that the United States launched a conventional raid in northeastern Somalia at the end of May targeting the new global leader of the ISIS terrorist organization.

Three American officials said that the US military targeted the new global leader of ISIS in the raid, but it (the army) could not confirm his death.

The US government has identified Abdelkader Momen as the head of ISIS's Somali branch , but two US officials say that last year he quietly became the global leader of the terrorist group.

On May 31, 2024, the US Africa Command issued  a statement  in which it said that it launched an air strike against ISIS elements in a remote area 81 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of Bosaso, Somalia, and killed three militants. The AFRICOM statement did not mention who it was. The United States is targeting him or whomever was killed.

A senior administration official confirmed that the United States had carried out a strike against a major ISIS target in Somalia, but refused to name the person and said that the United States was still working to verify the result.

The United States says Momen is responsible for deadly attacks across Somalia over the past decade, including the assassination of a judicial official in his home in 2019 and the seizure and occupation of a city in the Puntland region in 2016 for months.

In 2016, the United States declared him a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, saying he poses a significant risk of committing terrorist acts that threaten the security of American citizens, national security, foreign policy, or the American economy.

Two US officials said that Momen's assumption of the position of ISIS's last global leader was not widely known.

It is worth noting that in August 2023, ISIS announced the killing of its fourth leader, Abu Al-Hussein Al-Husseini Al-Qurashi, in northern Syria .

The announcement came via an audio recording broadcast by the organization, which then confirmed the selection of “Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi as its new leader . ”

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

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