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Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi Is Dead, Says Syrian War Monitoring Group
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has confirmed the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS).
“(We have) confirmed information from leaders, including one of the first rank, in [ISIS territory] in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor,” director of the UK-based war monitoring group Rami Abdurrahman told Reuters on Tuesday.
ISIS’s official news agency Amaq is yet to confirm his death.
About a month ago, the Russian Foreign Ministry claimed to have carried out an air strike in Syria which killed Baghdadi and several other high profile ISIS leaders, but did not provide any evidence backing up the claim.
The Pentagon said it had no immediate information to corroborate Baghdadi’s death.
Last week the Iraqi army officially declared ISIS’s de facto Iraqi capital of Mosul liberated from the militants, marking the destruction of one half of the so-called caliphate also known as Daesh.