Islamic State of Iraq and Syria leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi probably isn’t dead, but no one who’s in a position to know for sure is saying anything.
Rumors of Baghdadi’s death exploded over the weekend on social media along with a photograph purporting to show his body. The photo was debunked as a fake by several sources and appeared to have been a doctored version of an image of an Albanian militant killed in Syria in 2013 that was published on the Arabic-language Yemeni hournews.net website.
But it’s not clear what, if anything, actually happened to Baghdadi. Iraqi officials revealed Thursday that U.S. attacks killed one of his top aides and two others. The Iraqi newspaper Al-Sabah reported Monday that Baghdadi had been seriously wounded in the strikes.
The Pentagon hasn’t weighed in on the matter since Thursday, when spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters the airstrikes had been directed against troop formations of the Islamist extremist group and if there were leaders with those troops “they are likely to be killed.”
ISIS has emerged as a major new threat in the Middle East this year after adding a large portion of northern Iraq, including the major city of Mosul, to its holdings in Syria. It is seeking to establish a new Islamic caliphate as a challenge to existing governments in the region.
President Obama plans a major speech Wednesday to outline his strategy for confronting and defeating the group.
