Islamic State head Baghdadi believed dead after US strike
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was believed to be dead after a US military raid in Syria’s Idlib region, US media reported early Sunday.
Baghdadi may have killed himself with a suicide vest as US special operations forces descended, media said citing multiple government sources.
He was the target of the secretly planned operation that was approved by President Donald
Trump, officials said.
Long pursued by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS), Baghdadi has been erroneously reported dead several times in recent years.
Officials told ABC News that biometric work was underway to firm up the identification of those killed in the raid.
The White House announced Trump would make a “major statement” Sunday at 9 a.m. (1300 GMT), without providing details.
Trump earlier tweeted, without explaining, “Something very big has just happened!”
Baghdadi, a native of Iraq and around 48 years old, led Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, taking credit for suicide bombings and other attacks targeting Shiites and moderate Sunnis that left thousands dead over 2010-2013.
He then broke with Al-Qaeda and announced his own, more aggressive jihadist group named Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (alternately, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) that aimed to establish its own deeply conservative Islamic nation, or Caliphate, on territory straddling the Iraq-Syria border.
The group’s rule was notoriously brutal, and it was globally condemned as a “terrorist organization,” blamed for the deaths of thousands of civilians — in summary executions and beheadings — and accused of war crimes.
Baghdadi though was rarely seen. After 2014 he disappeared from sight, only surfacing in a video in April this year with a wiry grey and red beard and an assault rifle at his side, as he encouraged followers to “take revenge” for IS members who had been killed.
“If Baghdadi was indeed in Barisha, it will be interesting to understand how he managed to even get there (through Syria or through Turkey?), and how it was possible for him to stay there,” tweeted Michael Horowitz, a Middle East security analyst with the Le Beck consultancy.