Doubt about Russian claim to have killed IS leader

MOSCOW this weekend said its forces may have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria last month, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were sceptical.

The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since he declared a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from a mosque in Mosul in 2014, after leading his fighters on a sweep through northern Iraq.

If the report does prove true, it would be one of the biggest blows yet to IS, which is trying to defend its shrinking territory against an array of forces backed by regional and global powers in Syria and Iraq.

But US officials said US agencies were sceptical about the report. Several Iraqi security officials said Iraq was doubtful as well.

“His death has been reported so often that you have to be cautious until a formal Daesh statement comes,” a European security official said, using an Arabic acronym for the group.

The Russian defence ministry said on its Facebook page that it was checking information that Baghdadi was killed in the strike on a meeting on the outskirts of Raqqa in Syria, launched on May 28. “According to the information, which is now being checked via various channels, also present at the meeting was . . . alBaghdadi, who was eliminated as a result of the strike,” it said.

However, a colonel with the Iraqi national security service said that at the time of the attack Baghdadi was believed to be far from Raqqa, operating cautiously in the border area between Iraq and Syria with just a handful of close aides, and avoiding using telecommunications equipment to evade surveillance. —