ISIS leader narrowly escapes death

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi allegedly narrowly escaped death when a meeting of the terror group’s leaders meeting was targeted by Iranian paramilitary forces.

A paramilitary leader claimed they had attacked the site of the meeting, and managed to kill several top ISIS leaders, but not the main man. They claim al- Baghdadi survived the shelling as he was ‘a few minutes late for the meeting’ east of Euphrates in Syria.

‘The Iranian shelling against specific pockets of Islamic State, east of Euphrates in Syria, using missiles few days ago, targeted an important meeting for the so- called Islamic State’s war council, to which Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi was on way, ’ Jabb a r al- Maamouri, leader of paramilitary group al- Hashd al- Shaabi, said according to Iraqi News.

The leader of the Islamist terrorist group ‘ was about to get killed in the shelling but he survived as he was late few minutes for the meeting.’

Baghdadi, who has been pronounced dead on several occasions, is thought to be hiding in the eastern Syrian area near the Iraqi border, frequently moving from place to place with a small group of follower

In August, he resurfaced in a purported new audio recording in which he urged his followers to keep up the fight despite IS having lost around 90 percent of the territory it held at the height of its reign of terror.

Reeling in Baghdadi will not be simple, said Hassan Hassan, a senior research fellow at the Program on Extremism at the George Washington University in Washington.

‘ He and his group learned from previous mistakes that led to the killing of the top two leaders in 2010, (al-Baghdadi’s predecessor) Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and his war minister Abu Hamza al- Muhajir,’ Hassan told AFP.

‘This means that only a very few and highly-trusted people know where he is.’

The mountains, desert, river valleys and villages of the border area provide ‘several possible hideouts,’ Hassan noted.

The jihadists have since lost nearly all its territory thanks to years of counter-offensives by Syrian and Iraqi forces as well as US-led operations.