IS leader killed in US raid in Syria remains murky figure
By BASSEM MROUE Asssociated Press
BEIRUT (AP) — The leader of the Islamic State group killed in a U.S. raid overnight in northwest Syria was largely a mystery, with almost no known photos, never appearing in public or in the group’s videos. He met his end in the same rebel-held Idlib province where his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was hunted by the Americans more than two years ago, some distance from the main theaters in eastern Syria and Iraq where the group once held vast swaths of territory in a self-declared “caliphate.” His death comes as IS militants, after years of low-level hit-and-run ambushes, had begun to carry out bolder, higher profile attacks.