Syria's army has taken credit for killing the head of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in an operation in the country's south in October, state media reported on Friday.
Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi was killed in an operation carried out in Deraa, the southern province where Syria's uprising first kicked off in 2011, according to those involved in the fighting as well as the U.S. military.
It was both the first time the U.S.-led coalition was not involved in killing the top IS leader and the first time an IS leader was killed in Syria's south rather than the north, where a range of factions, some of them U.S.-backed, hold sway.
