BEIRUT — When Syrian rebels attacked a hideout in mid-October in the southern Syrian village of Jassem, they had no idea that a militant commander who was killed in the operation was the leader of the Islamic State group.
Syrian opposition activists and state media apparently did not know that the man killed was IS leader Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and identified him as Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi.
Conducted by rebel fighters allied with Syrian government troops, the operation lasted two days and started on Oct. 14, the day after a bombing on a bus in a suburb of the capital Damascus. That attack killed 18 Syrian soldiers and wounded at least 27 others.
Syrian state media at the time reported that authorities received information that IS members have hideouts in the northern neighborhoods of Jassem, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of Damascus. Syrian troops were joined with former rebels who had reconciled with the government in 2018 and were allowed to stay and keep their weapons in the southern province of Daraa, and together they began an operation against the suspected militant hideouts, state news agency SANA said at the time.
Amid the intensity of the fighting, an Iraqi IS commander known as Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, made his family escape from the house where he was staying and once they were out and he was totally surrounded, the Iraqi citizen detonated an explosive belt he was wearing, killing…
