ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US raid according to unconfirmed reports

The US military conducted a special operations raid targeting the group’s leader. Newsweek report that a US Army source has told them al-Baghdadi was killed and the defence department in Washington has told the White House that they have “high confidence” that he is dead. A Pentagon source told Newsweek al-Baghdadi was “dead pending verification”.

 

On Saturday night, President Donald Trump tweeted: “Something very big just happened!”

Al-Baghdadi was active in the insurgency against US troops following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

He is understood to have been held in the Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca detention centres before joining Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The group later split to form ISIS during the Syrian Civil War.

 

The group made gains in Iraq and Syria leading to al-Baghdadi to declare a global caliphate in 2014 from the Grand Al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul. 

ISIS became noteworthy for terror attacks across the Middle East and also further abroad. 

An international coalition to defeat ISIS has taken back ground in Iraq and Syria, but information about al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts has been rare. 

A ex-senior counterterrorism official said: “Baghdadi being in Syria follows his presumed pattern of life operating between Iraq and Syria.”

READ MORE: Trump brands Syria a ‘bloodstained sand’ as he boasts US defeated ISIS

source: express.co.uk