ISIS leader urges violence against media

CAIRO — The leader of Islamic State urged followers to burn their enemies everywhere and target “media centres of the infidels,” according to an audio recording released Thursday that the extremists said was by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The reclusive militant leader, who has only appeared in public once, also vowed to continue fighting and lavished praise on jihadis despite their loss of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in July.

The recording was released by the Islamic State-run al-Furqan outlet, which has in the past released messages from al-Baghdadi and other top figures of the extremist group. The voice in the over 46-minute-long audio sounded much like previous recordings of al-Baghdadi. His last previous purported message was released in November, also in an audio recording.

Russian officials said in June there was a “high probability” that al-Baghdadi had died in a Russian airstrike on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital. U.S. officials later said they believed he was still alive.

Al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts are unknown but he is believed to be in Islamic State’s dwindling territory in Syria. The cities of Raqqa and Deir el-Zour are under siege and likely too dangerous for him to hide in. Some Islamic State leadership is believed to have gone to the nearby town of Mayadeen, and the group still holds a stretch of the Euphrates River from Deir el-Zour to the Iraqi border, as well as remote desert areas along the border.

In the recording, he also consoled militants over the number of major military setbacks suffered in recent months in both Iraq and Syria.