Tabnak – As different domestic and international forces are continuing their campaigns against ISIS terrorist group in Syria, new reports published by the Russian sources indicate that the leader of the group has been killed in a recent airstrike. However, US and Syrian sources still express doubt on the issue.
After some unofficial reports published in the recent days indicating that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed in a recent Russian operation, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared today it is "highly likely” al-Baghdadi was eliminated in an airstrike carried out by the Russian Air Force in Syria earlier in May.
"It is highly likely that Islamic State (ISIS) leader al-Baghdadi was eliminated in an airstrike of the Russian Air Force on a militant command post in a southern suburb of the city of Raqqa in late May,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov told Sputnik News, citing data provided by the Russian Defense Ministry.
Syromolotov added that the information about al-Baghdadi’s death is now being verified through "various channels.”
CBS news notes in a report that Russia first claimed on June 16 that the ISIS leader was believed to have been killed in a strike targeting a meeting of the group's leaders just outside its de facto capital in Raqqa, Syria, but western officials cast doubt on the claim then.
On Thursday, US officials told that they still could not confirm the Russians' claim, "based on what we have." All U.S. government and military officials who spoke to CBS News said they had no reason to believe al-Baghdadi was dead.
Observers also expressed skepticism at the time. Rami Abdulrahman, director of the UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, claimed that the Russian reports were "100 percent untrue." Hisham al-Hashemi, an adviser to the Iraqi government on ISIS, told Newsweek he believed Russia had got the wrong target.
Both Hashemi and Abdulrahman said it would be unlikely that Baghdadi would attend a military council so close to the city of Raqqa. A Kurdish-Arab alliance, backed by the US-led coalition, is besieging the city, the largest the group controls in Syria.
However, according to RT, the Russian Ministry of Defense has released images of the area hit by the airstrike. The Russian military also gave the information about the strike to the US forces, but the Pentagon said that it had "no information to corroborate those reports” on Baghdadi’s death.
Baghdadi, who declared the creation of the so-called Islamic State in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014, has been the most-wanted ISIS figure for the US-led coalition, but he has remained elusive. The US State Department announced in December a bounty of $25 million on his head for information leading to his death or capture.
The last time Baghdadi released an audio message was Nov. 3, 2016, when he released an audio statement urging followers to continue to fight for the Iraqi city of Mosul.
