The leader of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist militia, Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi, is said to have been killed in a US attack in Syria, according to US media reports. As reported on Sunday citing government officials, Baghdadi was the target of a US military deployment in Idlib province in northwestern Syria.
The IS-chief, who has already been pronounced dead several times, is said to have detonated an explosives vest when US special forces attacked. The operation was prepared in secret and arranged by US President Donald Trump. As the television station CNN reported, the US military wants to confirm the death of the IS leader only after all tests are completed.
However, it was also said Iraqi security circles that Bagdadi should be dead. It has received a corresponding confirmation from Syria, said two representatives of the Iraqi security forces of the news agency Reuters. „Our sources in Syria have confirmed to the Iraqi intelligence team looking for Baghdadi that he and his bodyguards were killed in Idlib,“ one of the insiders said. Baghdad’s hiding-place was discovered when he tried to bring his family out of Idlib to the border with Turkey.
Trump: „Something very important happened!“
Related to this could be an announced White House press conference. Trump plans to speak at the White House at 9:00 am on Sunday morning, White House Vice Speaker Hogan Gidley said in Washington. Details, he did not name. Trump had previously written in the online service Twitter: „Just something very important has happened!“ Details he did not betray.
„The Invisible Sheikh“
The location of Baghdadi has been puzzled for years. In public, the IS leader appeared only once when he proclaimed a „caliphate“ in Syria and Iraq in a mosque in Mosul, northern Iraq, in July 2014. Because there are so few shots and signs of life from Bagdadi, he was repeatedly called the „invisible sheikh“.
Most recently, IS has published a video in April that will show Baghdadi. In it he called on his followers to continue the fight despite the loss of their „caliphate“. In September, the IS leader called his supporters in an audio message to release captured fighters and their families. Idlib is the last stronghold of the insurgents in Syria. Most of Idlib is under the control of Syrian al-Qaeda spin-off Hajat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Since 2010 at the head of the IS
Bagdadi was born in 1971 as the son of a poor family in the central Iraqi Samarra under the name Ibrahim Awad al-Badri. He was passionate about football, studied theology in Baghdad, and went underground after the US invasion of 2003 as the leader of a jihadist group. In February 2004, he was imprisoned by the US Army in Bucca Prison. The prison in southern Iraq was known as the „University of Jihad“, where radical Islamists met with military and intelligence officials of the fallen Baath regime of Saddam Hussein.
When he was released in December 2004 for lack of evidence, he joined al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. When first Sarkawi and then his successor were killed, the former theology student in 2010 took over the leadership of extremists in Iraq under the name of Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi. By recruiting former officers of Saddam Hussein, he made a powerful force out of his guerrilla group and called them Islamic State (IS) in 2014. The IS conquered areas in Syria and Iraq and claimed terrorist attacks worldwide.
However, ISIS gradually lost its dominion in Iraq and Syria. Officially, the IS was defeated with the fall of its last retreat in the East Syrian Baghus. Only a few months ago, however, the US-led anti-IS coalition said in a report that there are still between 14,000 and 18,000 IS members in the former dominion of Islamists between Syria and Iraq.
