Washington: A top Islamic State group commander known as "Omar the Chechen" is dead after suffering injuries in a US-led coalition strike in northeastern Syria, the Pentagon confirmed.
The announcement would appear to clear up the fate of the notorious Omar Al Shishani, a week after a US official said the most-wanted militant had been targeted in a March 4 attack on the jihadist's convoy.
"We believe he subsequently died of his injuries," Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman said.
On Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Shishani had been "clinically dead" for several days.
Shishani – the nom de guerre of Tarkhan Batirashvili – was one of the IS leaders most wanted by Washington, which put a $5 million bounty on his head.
Media reports said that an Islamic State fighter from the US was taken into custody in northern Iraq after emerging from territory controlled by the militant group in Syria.
CBS News, citing two sources with the Kurdish peshmerga military force, said the apparent American defector was trying to return to Turkey. He was identified as Muhammad Jamal Amin, 27, of Virginia, it said, citing Kurdish news organizations.
The Pentagon said it could not immediately confirm the incident. The US Embassy in Baghdad also could not confirm it, CBS said.
CNN, which also reported the incident, said the fighter was captured near Sinjar and handed over to Kurdish authorities in the region.
Peshmerga forces initially fired warning shots when they saw the man on concerns he was a suicide bomber, but he identified himself as a former member of Islamic State who wanted to turn himself in, according to CBS.
Amin, whose father is from Palestine and mother from Iraq, had fought with the militants for a couple of months, it said, citing Kurdish reports.
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