Leader of ISIS Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed, claims Syrian state TV
The leader of ISIS has been killed in an air strike, according to reports from Syrian state TV.
The world’s most wanted terrorist, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is said to have been killed on Saturday, though the reports are yet to be verified.
This isn’t the first time that the extremist leader has been reported dead, so the news has been met with scepticism. The terrorist organisation’s media arm Amaq has not yet confirmed the reports.
It is claimed that the leader of ISIS was killed during a heavy artillery raid on Raqqa, the Islamic State-occupied city in Syria, reports the Mirror.
The leader, who is known for his extremist sermons that have inspired terrorist attacks throughout Europe has a £20million bounty on his head.
At least seven civilians were reported to have been killed in Saturday’s air strikes, according to independent Syrian news platform Raqqa24, but as yet there is no mention of the ISIS leader.
In January, it was reported that he had been critically injured in a similar attack and last week, ISIS fighters surrendered the Iraqi town of Baaj, which has served as one of the the leader’s hideouts and is located west of Mosul near the Iraqi-Syrian border.
It is thought that Baghdadi fled Mosul for good before Iraqi forces, with U.S. backing, carried out a major assault on Iraq’s second city in October 2016.
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Baghdadi was born in Samarra, Iraq, in 1971 and reportedly joined the extremist movement in 2003 following the US invasion of Iraq.
The hate preacher has not been seen in public since carrying out a sermon in Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri July 1994.
