ISIS leader reportedly wounded in airstrike in Iraq

Middle East, News April 21, 2015 , by IRIA No Comments

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group (IS), was reportedly seriously wounded in an airstrike in late March and has since stepped down from day to day leadership of the militant organisation.

Baghdadi, who is the self-described ‘caliph’ or spiritual leader of ISIS, was seriously hurt in a strike in a village in western Iraq on March 18, according to a report.

The newspaper said that his wounds were at first thought to be so serious that he might die, and that while he had since staged a gradual recovery, he was not at present involved in the direct day-to-day control of the terror group. When they first heard of his wounds, ISIS deputies convened meetings to discuss who might take over as leader.

According to the report, al-Baghdadi was injured in March this year in a US-led coalition air attack on the jihadists at al-Baaj district of Nineveh, close to the Syrian border. It also says al-Baghdadi suffered near-fatal wounds initially and since made a slow recovery. However, he is yet to resume his day-to-day control of the jihadist group.

Al-Baghdadi, an ambitious Iraqi jihadist believed to be in his early 40s, has a $10 million US bounty on his head. Since taking the reins of the Islamic State in 2010, he has transformed it from a local branch of al-Qaida into an independent transnational military force, positioning himself as perhaps the pre-eminent figure in the global jihadist community.

Baghdadi was reportedly traveling with other ISIS leaders in a three-car convoy that was targeted by the U.S.-led coalition forces, and a number were killed. But it seems the coalition did not know Baghdadi was in one of the cars. The coalition has been specifically targeting ISIS leadership as part of its campaign against the organization.

Baghdadi was reportedly seriously injured before, in October 2014, in heavy coalition attacks on ISIS’ capital city of Raqqa in Syria, and later was said to have fled to Mosul in Iraq. News reports in November said he may have been killed, but a week later ISIS released an audio tape they said was of Baghdadi.

The ISIS leader is a 43-year-old Iraqi from Samarra, north of Baghdad, who was detained for four years by the Americans during their occupation of Iraq. He emerged as a leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq – which later became known as IS – in 2010 and has been described as a “ruthless battlefield tactician”.