Abu Nabil al-Anbari
Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al-Zubaydi, better known by his noms de guerre Abu Nabil al Anbari (Arabic: أبو نبيل الأنباري) and Abul Mughirah al Qahtani,[1] was a commander in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the leader of its Libyan branch. Al-Anbari was killed by a US military airstrike on 13 November 2015.[2][3][4][5]
Abu Nabil al-Anbari was an Iraqi policeman who, following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, joined al-Qaida in Iraq and took part in the Iraqi insurgency. Arrested by American forces, al-Anbari spent time in detention in Abu Ghraib prison.[6] He would later serve as ISIL's "governor" of Salahuddin Governorate, responsible for the group's operations there.[7] In September 2014, ISIL's leadership dispatched him from Iraq to Libya as part of a delegation to gather pledges of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from local militants and lead the nascent ISIL branch in the country.[8]
Al-Anbari was killed in a US airstrike outside of Derna, Libya on 13 November 2015.[4] The Libya Herald reported local claims that al-Anbari had not been killed in the airstrike,[9] however a eulogy to Abu Nabil al-Anbari was published online by a member of ISIL some weeks later.[10] In a statement following the strike, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said "Abu Nabil's death will degrade [ISIL's] ability to meet the group's objectives in Libya, including recruiting new members, establishing bases in Libya, and planning external attacks on the United States."[11] He added: "Reporting suggests [he] may also have been the spokesman in the February 2015 Coptic Christian execution video," referring to a video which showed the beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts in Libya after their kidnapping in 2015.[3] His killing was the first military action by the United States against an ISIL target outside of Iraq and Syria while still connected to the organization’s core leadership (other militants struck in countries like Nigeria and Afghanistan are not believed by US officials to be directly linked to the Iraq and Syria based leadership).[3][12]
In January 2016, ISIL launched a series of attacks and bombings across Libya named "the battle of Abu al-Mughira al-Qahtani" in his honour.[13] Al-Anbari was succeeded as leader of ISIL in Libya by Abdul Qadr al-Najdi.[14]
References
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- ↑ [Libya Feature: Islamic State Claims Bombing That Killed At Least 60 http://eaworldview.com/2016/01/libya-feature-islamic-state-claims-bomb/]
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