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ISIS terror leader at large after US strike kills top commander amid rising Africa threat: analyst
Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, ISIS’s shadow commander in West Africa, was killed May 16 using what an extremism analyst describes as one of the hardest forms of intelligence to detect, after decades being shielded by “deep local networks” across the region.
While the killing dealt one of the biggest blows to ISIS’s global network in years, disrupting operations in northeastern Nigeria, the terror group’s top leader, Abu Hafs al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, remains at large as Africa becomes the movement’s global epicenter.
“There is no single ISIS ‘headquarters’ in Nigeria; ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) operates dozens of small, shifting camps scattered across the Lake Chad islands and the Borno bush,” Dr. Omar Mohammed, Senior Research Fellow at the GW Program on Extremism, told Fox News Digital.
“Al-Minuki would have had no smartphones, relying instead on courier-based communications and constant movement between these small camps,” he said.
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President Donald Trump’s explicit reference to “sources who kept us informed” points directly to human intelligence, or HUMINT — the hardest form of intelligence for a target to detect or counter, Mohammed explained.
The precision strike successfully penetrated defenses that had been held for years.
“He would have utilized deep local networks the Nigerian military has struggled to penetrate for over a decade,” Mohammed added.
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“His operational security would have been severe,” Mohammed said. “But two things eventually undo even careful targets: time generates patterns, and human sources are extremely difficult to defeat.”
“Despite severe operational security, al-Minuki was ultimately compromised through persistent human intelligence,” he noted. “Al-Minuki knew he was marked.”
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The Nigerian army described the strike as “a meticulously planned and highly complex precision air-land operation” carried out Saturday between midnight and 4 a.m. in Metele, located in Borno State in northeast Nigeria.
U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, placed the strike in northeastern Nigeria, with Nigerian army communications pointing specifically to the Metele region.
Despite the tactical success, the current ISIS “caliph,” or overall leader, remains on the run, according to reports.
Al-Qurashi was “named following his predecessor’s death in Syria,” Mohammed claimed.
“He is deliberately faceless, with analysts describing this line of leaders as the ‘caliphs of the shadows,’” Mohammed said, noting al-Qurashi assumed leadership after Turkish authorities killed his predecessor in 2023.
While al-Qurashi’s exact location is unknown, reports indicate he traveled from Syria or Iraq through Yemen to Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region.
“This is where the financial hub also sits, meaning the entire center of gravity of the organization — leadership, finance, operational direction — has been quietly relocating to Africa for years,” Mohammed said.
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Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project confirms this regional shift, showing more than two-thirds of all Islamic State global activity now takes place in Africa.
“Africa has transitioned from a peripheral theater to the operational and financial center of global ISIS activity,” Mohammed explained. “Africa is no longer a peripheral theater. It is the main one. Funding is overwhelmingly local and extractive — taxation, ransom, smuggling — which is precisely why these networks are so resilient.”
“Al-Minuki, for example, rose through ISWAP and operated across the Lake Chad Basin and into the wider Sahel,” he noted.
“Still, staking out al-Minuki is the most significant blow to ISIS’ global leadership architecture since the al-Baghdadi raid in 2019, executed in the theater that has quietly become the group’s beating heart,” Mohammed said before adding the strike was “not a one-off kinetic moment.”
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Spencer Pratt vows to leave LA and find ‘last American Dream’ in another city if mayoral bid fails
Spencer Pratt’s love for Los Angeles may only extend through the primaries.
Pratt, 42, admitted that his time in the City of Angels may come to a close if the exit polls don’t align with his mayoral bid.
During a chat with fellow Los Angeleno Adam Carolla from his burned-out lot in the Pacific Palisades, the reality star said that he’s only interested in rebuilding his home if he wins the race.
“I’m going to win the lawsuit against Gavin Newsom’s state park, and with that money, if I’m the mayor of Los Angeles, I will rebuild,” Pratt confessed.
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“If Karen Bass gets re-elected or Nithya [Raman] gets elected, I will be done with trying to live in LA.”
Pratt doubled down on his threat, and said when he wins the lawsuit, he’s packing up to find a new American Dream.
“I’ll take that money from the Newsom state park and the LADWP, and I’ll go somewhere that my kids will not have to see naked zombies, and I can have the last American dream somewhere,” Pratt said.
“But I will not rebuild if these people are in charge, because what would I be putting money into?”
Pratt’s representatives did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Pratt, wife Heidi Montag and more than a dozen additional property owners, blamed the city of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power for causing damages to their homes in a lawsuit filed earlier this year.
Plaintiffs accused LADWP of making “the conscious decision to operate the water supply system with the reservoir drained and unusable as a ‘cost-saving’ measure,” in the lawsuit obtained by Fox News Digital.
The “Hills” star has been a vocal champion for LA residents since losing his home during the deadly Palisades wildfire, and launched his mayoral campaign in January with a focus on ousting incumbent Karen Bass due to mishandling of the wildfires.
While Pratt is a registered Republican, the Los Angeles mayoral election is officially nonpartisan. If no candidate tops 50% in the June 2 primary, the top two finishers will face off in November.
Fresh from a star-studded fundraiser hosted by David Foster and Katharine McPhee, Pratt admitted a “mind-blowing” list of influential names back his campaign to save his city.
“The list of mind-blowing movie stars, directors, studio presidents, these are my supporters,” Pratt told the “Ruthless Podcast” earlier this month. “I understand why they aren’t public-facing yet. Once I’m mayor, the support I’ll have for the industry to bring it back. It’s all there.”
In the wake of the devastating 2025 fires, Pratt became a leading advocate for the victims.
“My goal was just for these people to go to jail,” Pratt said. “And then when they didn’t go to jail, and I saw that it was just business as usual, that’s when I decided the only way to stop these people is to take their power from them.”
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Pratt grew up around Democrats, but did not consider himself a political figure before the devastating fires.
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“I haven’t posted a single political thing in my entire life,” the former star of The Hills said. “The only thing I’ve ever done, politics-wise, is back in the day I did a paparazzi set-up photo with a Sarah Palin shirt on, and then the next day I did a paparazzi photo with an Obama shirt on just to get multiple tabloid photos.”
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On April 21, Pratt joined Carolla on his “The Adam Carolla Show” podcast for an episode titled “Spencer Pratt Gets Adam Carolla’s Endorsement for LA Mayor!”
During the episode, Pratt and Carolla discussed homelessness, crime and what they described as failed leadership in Los Angeles, while Pratt outlined his plans to “bring back common sense” to City Hall.
“We have a bunch of Marxist, socialist f—ing r—-ds who are tearing this city down,” Carolla said.
Carolla later shared a photo of himself with Pratt on Instagram writing, “This man is going to save LA. @spencerprat. has my full endorsement for mayor!”
Fox News Digital’s Janelle Ash and the Ruthless Podcast Staff contributed to this report.
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