Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Russia studying if ISIS chief slain
It says al-Baghdadi likely killed in May airstrike in Raqqa
BEIRUT — Russia said Friday that it was verifying whether it had killed the leader of the Islamic State extremist group in an airstrike targeting a meeting of the group’s leaders just outside its de facto capital in Syria.
The spokesman for the U.S.-led, anti-Islamic State coalition said he would welcome such news, but urged caution.
“There have been several past claims of this kind that have been proven false and we have seen no definitive proof that this report is true either,” U.S. Army Col. Ryan Dillon said.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a Russian strike in late May along with other senior group commanders, adding that the information about his death was still “being verified through various channels.”
Asked later about that claim at a news conference in Moscow, however, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: “I don’t have a 100 percent confirmation of the information.”
There had been numerous reports in the past of al-Baghdadi being killed, but they did not turn out to be true. The Islamic State — or ISIS — leader last released an audio message on Nov. 3, urging his followers to keep up the fight for Mosul as they defend the Iraqi city against a major offensive that began weeks earlier.
The spokesman for the U.S.-led, anti-Islamic State coalition said in a statement Friday that he could not confirm the Russian claim.
The report of al-Baghdadi’s death comes as the Islamic State suffers major setbacks in which it has lost wide swaths of territory. Both of their remaining strongholds — Mosul in Iraq and Syria’s Raqqa — are under attack by various groups that are fighting under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.
As the militants’ foothold erodes, U.S. officials and Syrian activists say many commanders have fled Mosul and Raqqa in recent months for Mayadeen, a remote town in the heart of Syria’s Islamic State-controlled, Euphrates River valley near the Iraqi border. Their relocation could extend the group’s ability to wreak havoc in the region and beyond for months to come.
Most recently, the group claimed responsibility for attacks in Iran’s parliament and a shrine to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran, killing at least 17 people and injuring more than 50. It also claimed responsibility for the June 3 London attack that killed eight people.
Both attacks would have occurred after al-Baghdadi’s alleged killing.
Lavrov, at the news conference, added that if al-Baghdadi’s death is confirmed, its importance mustn’t be overestimated. Lavrov said “past examples of similar actions to strike the leadership of terrorist groups were presented with much enthusiasm and pomp, but the experience shows that those structures later regained their capability.”
The claim of al-Baghdadi’s possible demise also comes nearly three years to the day after he declared himself the leader of an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria, from a historic mosque in Mosul.
If confirmed, it would mark a major military and propaganda success for Russia, which has conducted a military campaign in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad since September 2015.
It is not clear who would replace al-Baghdadi if he was killed — the group has lost many of its senior commanders, killed in U.S.-led airstrikes, including Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, said by U.S. officials to be the No. 2 leader of the group.
Al-Hayali was killed in an August 2015 airstrike by the U.S. in Iraq.
Two other top figures, Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, and Abu Ali al-Anbari, the extremist group’s leading finance official, were killed in 2016.
The Defense Ministry said the May 28 air raid that targeted an Islamic State meeting held on the southern outskirts of Raqqa, Syria, also killed about 30 midlevel militant leaders and about 300 other fighters.
“According to the information that is being verified through various channels, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi also attended the meeting and was killed in the airstrike,” the military said in a statement.
It was not clear why al-Baghdadi, who is known to move around with great secrecy, would attend a meeting in an area frequently targeted by the coalition, along with 300 Islamic State fighters in attendance.
The Russian military sent drones to monitor the area and then dispatched a group of Su-34 bombers and Su-35 fighter jets to hit the Islamic State gathering.
The Defense Ministry added that it had warned the U.S. of the coming strike.
Al-Baghdadi is a nom de guerre for a man identified as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai. The U.S. is offering a $25 million reward for information leading to his death or capture.
Alexei Pushkov, the head of the committee for information policies at the upper house of the Russian parliament tweeted that “if confirmed, al-Baghdadi’s death will be a powerful blow to the IS. It has been retreating on all fronts, and the death of its leader will accelerate its demise.”