IS admits its boss Baghdadi dead: Reports
NEW DELHI: Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was reported dead by a Syrian monitoring group and an Iraqi TV news channel on Tuesday, a day after Iraq announced it had defeated the terror group in its stronghold of Mosul.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told news wires it had “confirmed information” from top IS commanders that al-Baghdadi had been killed.
“Top tier commanders from IS who are present in Deir Ezzor province have confirmed the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, emir of the Islamic State group, to the Observatory,” the group’s director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
“We learned of it today but we do not know when he died or how.” Deir Ezzor, in eastern Syria, remains largely under IS control even as the group is losing territory elsewhere in the country and in neighbouring Iraq. Al-Sumaria News quoted a source in Diyala area of eastern Iraq as saying that Daesh – an Arabic acronym commonly used for the IS – had announced the death of its leader.
It said the group had published a brief statement announcing the death and endorsing another statement issued earlier in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar. The source also told the channel the IS had warned of “internal disputes” after the “death” of al-Baghdadi and the sustainability of the “jihad of the caliphate”.
The reports did not give any details about the circumstances or time of al-Baghdadi’s death.