Isis leader ‘believed to be dead’ after targeted explosion in Syria

The leader of Islamic State is believed to be dead after he was targeted during a raid in Syria.

A US official told the Associated Press that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi had been killed in Syria’s Idlib province.

Confirmation that the Isis leader was killed in an explosion is yet to be formally announced but is ‘pending’, the official said.

But another official told the Reuters news agency an operation took place but was unable to confirm speculation that al Baghdadi was killed.

President Donald Trump tweeted last night: ‘Something very big has just happened!’

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said the president would be making a ‘major statement’ at 9am Washington time today – at 1pm in the UK.

He gave no further details about what the statement would say.

Something very big has just happened!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2019

Officials quoted anonymously by various media outlets in the US said forces targeted the militant leader in a raid in northwest Syria.

The Isis leader has been wrongly reported to be dead on previous occasions.

The raid was carried out by special operations forces after they received ‘actionable intelligence’, a White House source said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said helicopter gunfire had killed nine people near a village in the Syrian province of Idlib, where ‘groups linked to the Islamic State group’ were present.

Mr Trump’s decision to pull back US troops from Syria had raised concerns the terrorist group could resurge in the north of the country.

Al Baghdadi, described as the world’s most wanted man, led Isis for the last five years, presiding over its ascendancy as it cultivated a reputation for beheadings and attracted hundreds of thousands of followers to a sprawling and self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

He remained among the few Isis commanders still at large despite multiple claims in recent years about his death.

Who was al Baghdadi?

Al Baghdadi was born Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai in 1971 in Samarra, Iraq, but changed his name early on.

He was detained by US forces in Iraq and sent to Bucca prison in February 2004 due to ‘anti-US military operations’.

He was released 10 months later, after which he joined the al-Qaida branch in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

He later assumed control of the group, known at the time as the Islamic State of Iraq.

Under his watch, a group known as the Nusra Front were merged with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Over the years, he has been reported multiple times to have been killed, but none of these reports have been confirmed.

In 2017, Russian officials said there was a ‘high probability’ he had been killed in a Russian airstrike on the outskirts of Raqqa, but US officials later said they believed he was still alive.

Isis released a video of a man it said was Al Baghdadi earlier this year.

Before this, he had not been seen since 2014, when he proclaimed from Mosul the creation of a ‘caliphate’ across parts of Syria and Iraq.