Founder of ISIL’s Amaq news agency ‘killed in air strike’

Activists say Baraa Kadek was close to the ISIL leadership, gaining their trust and reportedly meeting with the extremist group's enigmatic leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi.

This undated still from video posted online on May 29, 2017, by the Amaq News Agency shows people inspecting damage from air strikes and artillery shelling in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. Amaq NShow more

BEIRUT // The founder of ISIL’s Amaq news agency was reportedly killed with his daughter in an air strike last week in eastern Syria, activists said on Thursday.

The extremist group itself has not reported the death of Baraa Kadek. Activists said he was close to the ISIL leadership, gaining their trust and reportedly meeting with the enigmatic leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi.

Kadek’s brother, Hozaifa, and former friends reported his death, saying he died in a suspected air strike by the US-led coalition against ISIL that hit his home in the town of Mayadeen in Deir Ezzour province.

Hozaifa posted the announcement on his Facebook page. A former colleague of Baraa Kadek said that he and his daughter and wife were injured in an air strike on Friday last week, and that he died of his wounds on Wednesday.

Mohammed Khaled, the executive manager of Aleppo 24, an activist-operated media platform and a former friend of Kadek, said his wife remains in critical condition.

There was no immediate comment from the coalition. Last week, it said it had carried out a series of air strikes on Thursday and Friday last week targeting ISIL media infrastructure and “propaganda facilities”. It said at the time that targeting such facilities “degrades” the group’s capabilities and its tools to inspire attacks on foreign lands.

At the time, activists said the coalition air strikes killed at least 35 civilians, including family members of ISIL.

Mayadeen has become a refuge for ISIL leaders as the group comes under attack in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Some observers of Syria say the group’s media operations have moved to Mayadeen as the coalition and allied Syrian Kurdish-led forces close in on Raqqa.

Mr Khaled said Kadek became close to, and trusted by, the leadership of ISIL after he supported their presence in the city of Aleppo in 2013. The extremists later clashed with other rebel factions, who chased them out of the city.

Mr Khaled said Kadek met with Al Baghdadi in Iraq in 2014.

“He even bragged in one of his posts about being ‘honoured’ by a meeting with Al Baghdadi,” Mr Khaled said, speaking from Syria. Kadek was also a friend of Abu Mohammed Al Adnani, ISIL’s powerful spokesman who was killed in an air strike in Aleppo in September 2016.

The Amaq news agency – which surfaced in 2014 – has become the fastest and most reliable source of information on the group’s activities. The militants have used it to post news, videos and claims of their attacks worldwide, and it has remained online despite bans from social media platforms.

ISIL also has other media outlets, including a daily recorded news bulletin and a weekly magazine.

Kadek was first known for his support of the moderate opposition and rebel groups, founding a media platform to cover their news. Mr Khaled said Kadek’s transformation was remarkable and came as funds dried up for the network he founded in the early days of the revolt against Syria’s government.

Originally from Aleppo province, Kadek joined IS in 2013, covered their activities in Aleppo and later moved on to found the group’s flagship media arm.

News of Kadek’s reported death came a day after supporters of ISIL and reports on activist websites said a prominent ISIL cleric had also been killed in an air strike. The circumstances and whereabouts of the death of Turki Al Binali, a Bahraini cleric who rose to be one of the group’s leading ideologues, were conflicting. Some said he died in an air strike in Deir Ezzour, while others said he died in Raqqa.

Russia said on Thursday it was systematically bombing any ISIL militants trying to flee Raqqa and had carried out two such bombing runs in the last week.

The US-led coalition is supporting an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias in their campaign to capture Raqqa, ISIL’s main base of operations in Syria.

But the Russian defence ministry said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance – which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia – had halted its offensive, leaving gaps on Raqqa’s southern edge which ISIL militants were using to try to leave the city and regroup further south.

It said Russian planes had destroyed a militant convoy headed for Palmyra from Raqqa on May 25, and had bombed three other convoys late on May 29 and in the early hours of May 30.

“Any attempts by Islamic State militants to leave Raqqa in the direction of Palmyra will be harshly stopped,” the ministry said. “The Russian air force in Syria has the firepower and means to effectively destroy terrorists at any time of the day or night.”

About 10,000 civilians have fled to a camp just north of ISIL’s bastion of Raqqa with hundreds more arriving each day as the battle for the city nears, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Thursday.

Residents are escaping Raqqa under cover of night as the SDF closes in, taking their chances against minefields and hostile fighters rather than risking death in a major battle expected to begin soon.

“It is not a massive exodus, but about 800 people a day are arriving in [the village of] Ain Issa every day,” said Natalie Roberts, an emergency doctor from MSF France who has just returned from the region.

* Associated Press and Reuters