Despite US defense officials’ assessments that Omar al-Shishani, a high-ranking commander of the Takfiri Daesh group in Syria, “likely died” in a US airstrike, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the militant has survived the attack.
“He’s not dead,” Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the UK-based organization, told AFP Wednesday.
American officials, speaking to various media outlets and news agencies on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that the top Takfiri commander had been targeted in an airstrike near the town of al-Shaddadi, situated in the south of the Hasakah province in northeastern Syria, on Friday.
One official went even further, saying, he was “likely dead.”
The director of the pro-opposition monitoring group rejected the allegations, saying the militant, was “seriously injured” and taken to a hospital in ISIL’s de facto capital, Raqqah.
“He was taken from the province of Hasakah to a hospital in Raqqah province…