The Life of 'Abu Rawaha al-Ansari' of the Islamic State's 'Sinai Province'

This week’s issue of the Islamic State’s al-Naba’ newsletter contains nothing on the U.S. announcement on Thursday morning about the killing of the group’s leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi (no surprise when we consider the matter, since there was also a time lag between the American announcement and the Islamic State announcement when Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in 2019).

In any case, this week’s issue features an interesting biography of a random guy who was a member of the group’s Sinai affiliate: ‘Abu Rawaha al-Ansari.’ According to this biography, he was born in 1992-1993 CE, was guided to correct Islam in the period late 2009/early 2010 and joined the ‘mujahideen’ in Sinai after attacks on Eilat (Umm al-Rashrash) in 2010 and other operations. He was among the forerunners in Sinai to declare allegiance to Islamic State and was given a variety of military positions in the group’s Sinai affiliate. He was supposedly skilled in placing explosives and was killed in August-September 2021 while placing booby-traps on a route.