Russian military says it might have killed Islamic State leader

No confirmation from U.S., IS yet

MOSCOW — Russia’s military said Friday that it was looking into whether one of its airstrikes in the Syrian desert had killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the selfdeclared caliph of the Islamic State group.

In a statement, the Defense Ministry said the Russian air force struck a meeting of Islamic State leaders May 28 outside Raqqa, Syria, the group’s de facto capital, possibly killing al-Baghdadi.

The statement offered no explanation for the two-week delay in publicizing the airstrike. And it was also not clear whether the Russian military had known in advance that al-Baghdadi was at the gathering, or had learned of this possibility only after the strike was carried out.

Rumors of al-Baghdadi's death had circulated for months before the Russian announcement. But a Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis of the Navy, said Friday: “We have no information to corroborate those reports.”

A senior Defense Department official confirmed Friday that Russian warplanes were “very active” carrying out airstrikes in the area south of Raqqa where Russian officials say al-Baghdadi mayhave been killed.

But the official, echoing public statements from the Pentagon, said he could not corroborate Russian reports of al-Baghdadi's death.

Nothing has been heard from al-Baghdadi publicly since November, when the Islamic State released a blistering audio recording in which he urged forces to remain firm in the face of the U.S.-backed Iraqi offensive in Mosul.

Rami Abdul Rahman, founder of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which closely monitors military operations in Syria, said it had no record of senior Islamic State leaders being in the area around Raqqa at the time of the strike. “It’s illogical for [IS] senior leaders to stay in Raqqa amid this military operation,” he said, adding that senior leaders had already decamped southeast, to the area around the city of Deir el-Zour, closer to the border with Iraq.

Laith Alkhouri, a director at Flashpoint, a business risk intelligence company in New York that tracks militant threats and cyberthreats, also expressed skepticism.

“At this time, I’m not seeing credible chatter to verify the claim by Russia,” he said. “Al-Baghdadi has been claimed killed multiple times before, and none of the previous claims proved legitimate.”

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, himself introduced a note of caution when asked about the Russian military’s reports. “So far, I do not have 100 percent confirmation of this information,” he said at a news conference.