- Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said to be among several hurt or killed ISIS leaders
- Fighters struck town of al-Qaim on Iraq-Syria border, witnesses said
- They say jihadis emptied hospital and demanded blood donors for wounded
- U.S. security sources would not confirm or deny al-Baghdadi is dead
Wounded? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader the so-called Islamic State, is said to be among those targeted
Speculation is mounting that the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was indeed killed in a US led airstrike on Friday.
On Sunday senior Iraqi officials confirmed that the leader of the Islamic State group was at the very least wounded in the coalition attack and said that the terror chief’s right hand man, Auf Abdulrahman Elefery, had perished during the aerial assault.
Elefery, who is known by his code name Abu Suja, died when planes hit an ISIS convoy near Mosul in northern Iraq.
However, conflicting reports surround the fate of Baghdadi.
ISIS members have taken to social media to claim that he was not traveling in the same convoy that claimed Elefery’s life, while other sources have stated that the feared warlord was killed or seriously injured in the airstrike.
An Iraqi security official, Hisham al-Hashimi, told the UK’s Daily Telegraph that Elefery was ‘Baghdadi’s very close companion’ and was killed in the attack which destroyed up to 10 vehicles.
‘He and Baghdadi were rarely separate. It’s for this reason that it could be possible that Baghdadi was with him at the time of the attack,’ he said to the British newspaper.
Hashimi revealed that Elefery’s death was confirmed to him by relatives.
General Nicholas Houghton, the Chief of the Defence Staff of the British Armed Forces told the Daily Telegraph: ‘I can’t absolutely confirm that Baghdadi has been killed. Probably it will take some days to have absolute confirmation.’
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An Interior Ministry intelligence official told The Associated Press that al-Baghdadi was hit during a meeting Saturday with militants in the town of Qaim in Iraq’s western Anbar province.
The official, citing informants within the militant group, said the strikes wounded al-Baghdadi. A senior Iraqi military official also said he learned in operational meetings that al-Baghdadi had been wounded.
Neither knew the extent of al-Baghdadi’s apparent injuries. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential material. State television later also reported that al-Baghdadi had been wounded.
