Jihadi ‘ Omar the Chechen’ is badly injured in US air strike
A SENIOR Islamic State general dubbed Omar the Chechen is believed to have been critically injured in a US- led bombing raid.
Ginger- haired Abu Omar al- Shishani, who had a $ 5million (£ 3.5million) bounty on his head, was initially reported killed in the strike in north- eastern Syria.
But British- based aid workers said yesterday that bearded al- Shishani, 30, was badly wounded but survived.
Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said he was being treated at a hospital near IS capital Raqqa.
He added: “He was taken from the province of Hassakeh to a hospital in Raqqa province, where he was treated by a jihadist doctor of European origin.”
Al- Shishani, the terror regime’s self- styled minister of war, was targeted last Friday in the town of Shaddadi.
US defence offi cials said he was in the region to oversee a fi ghtback after IS had suffered defeats by US- backed forces.
Some of the veteran fanatic’s bodyguards were killed when aircraft targeted his convoy.
Al- Shishani, born Takhan Tayumurazoch Batirashvili in Soviet- era Georgia, served in its army as recently as 2008 during its confl ict with Russia.
He was discharged from the military in 2010 after suffering tuberculosis and was later jailed on illegal gun charges.
His role in Syria with the Al Qaeda offshoot was to control the cities of Aleppo and Latakia as well as Raqqa itself.
Hardline Islam sources said he led an army of up to 1,000 foreign fi ghters responsible for beheadings and suicide bombings in northern Syria.
Al- Shishani was believed to have recruited British butcher Jihadi John and had been pictured in his company before his death in a raid last year.
However, American defence analyst Luke Coffey warned that attacks like the one on al- Shishani were still failing to disrupt the activities of IS in the long- term.