Posted June 17, 2017 09:22:02

Photo: Russia says it is investigating whether Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died in an airstrike (Reuters)

Moscow says its forces may have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria last month, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were sceptical.

The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since he declared a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from a mosque in Mosul in 2014, after leading his fighters on a sweep through northern Iraq.

If the report does prove true, it would be one of the biggest blows yet to Islamic State, which is trying to defend its shrinking territory against an array of forces backed by regional and global powers in both Syria and Iraq.

But in the absence of independent confirmation, some US officials said US agencies were sceptical of the report.

Several Iraqi security officials said Iraq was doubtful as well.

"His death has been reported so often that you have to be cautious till a formal Daesh statement comes," a European security official said, using an Arabic acronym for the group.

US Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "We have no information to corroborate those reports."

A senior Trump administration official noted a "number of infirmities" in the reports, which have given US officials reason to question their accuracy.

"Some of those infirmities suggested that this happened at the end of May and that there were upwards of 300 or more soldiers killed in that strike," said the official, who asked not to be identified.

"A strike of that size and that claim that would have happened that long ago without any knowledge is something that made me curious."

Target 'was eliminated', says Russian military

The Russian Defence Ministry said on its Facebook page that it was checking information that Baghdadi was killed in the strike on the outskirts of Raqqa in Syria, launched after Russia received intelligence about a meeting of Islamic State leaders.

"On May 28, after drones were used to confirm the information on the place and time of the meeting of IS leaders, between 00:35 and 00:45, Russian air forces launched a strike on the command point where the leaders were located," the statement said.

"According to the information which is now being checked via various channels, also present at the meeting was Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was eliminated as a result of the strike."

However, a colonel with the Iraqi national security service told Reuters Baghdadi was not believed to have been in Raqqa at the time of the strike in late May.

One of Baghdadi's aides may have been killed rather than Baghdadi himself, the colonel said.

He said Baghdadi was believed to be operating cautiously in the border area between Iraq and Syria with just a handful of close aides, and avoiding using telecommunications equipment to evade surveillance.

Another Iraqi intelligence official said the Russians had not shared any information with Iraqi authorities to indicate Baghdadi was killed.

Iraq was checking the report and would announce his death if it received "solid confirmation".

Hoshiyar Zebari, a long-serving former Iraqi foreign minister and now a senior adviser to the government of the Kurdish autonomous region, also told Reuters there was no confirmation of Baghdadi's death.

The Russian defence ministry statement said the strike was believed to have killed several other senior leaders of the group in addition to Baghdadi, as well as around 30 field commanders and up to 300 of their personal guards.

The IS leaders had gathered at the command centre, in a southern suburb of Raqqa, to discuss possible routes for the militants' retreat from the city, the statement said.

The United States was informed in advance about the place and time of the strike, the Russian military said.

Reuters

Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, terrorism, iraq, syrian-arab-republic