Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State with a $25 million United States bounty on his head, may be buried underneath the rubble of a building somewhere outside of Raqqa. That, at least, is what the Russian Defense Ministry claimed Friday.
Based on Moscow’s version of events, Baghdadi was meeting with dozens of high-level Islamic State commanders in a compound outside of the group’s capital in late May, discussing how to save as much of the Islamic State’s military leadership as possible from being annihilated by the U.S.-supported push into the city. The Russians apparently got wind of the meeting, and dispatched fighter and bomber aircraft to the location in the hope of obliterating the Islamic State’s cadre of senior and mid-ranking commanders in one fell swoop.
