- Trump announced Sunday morning that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dead
- The U.S.-led forces descended on al-Baghdadi’s lair in Idlib, Syria overnight
- Baghdadi detonated his suicide vest, killing himself and three of his children
- Analysts have said that al-Bagdadi’s death represents a ‘huge setback for IS’Â
- They also warned group will use his death to recruit more people to their cause
- Abdullah Qardash, who served under Hussein, thought to be the new ISIS leader
ISIS ‘already has a new leader’ barely a day after former chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died ‘like a dog’ in US strikes as the former Saddam Hussein army officer takes the terror group’s reins.
Abdullah Qardash – sometimes spelt Karshesh – was said to have been nominated by the now deceased al-Baghdadi to run the group’s ‘Muslim Affairs’, as reported by Newsweek.
Little is known about Qardash, who once served under Saddam Hussein.
But he is understood to have already taken over a number of duties from al-Baghdadi prior to his demise this week when he detonated a suicide vest.
An official told Newsweek:Â ‘Baghdadi was a figurehead. He was not involved in operations or day-to-day.’
‘All Baghdadi did was say yes or noâno planning.’
It comes as experts have warned the IS and the extremist jihadist movements have over the last one-and-a-half decades repeatedly shown resilience after the death of key leaders.
And their militants, battle-hardened by years of fighting, remain in place around the world.
The group may have been ready for the death of Baghdadi and after an initial adjustment period of a few months could even use it as a rallying case for launching new attacks, they added.
Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor in Middle East studies at Sciences-Po in Paris, said his death represented a huge setback for IS, which at the height of its success in 2014 proclaimed a new ‘caliphate’ across parts of Iraq and Syria.