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Baghdadi death near 100 percent certain: Ifax quotes Russian senator

 Baghdadi death near 100 percent certain: Ifax quotes Russian senator

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. File photo.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. File photo.
(Reuters) The likelihood that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed is close to 100 percent, Interfax news agency quoted Viktor Ozerov, the head of the defense committee in the Russian upper house of parliament, as saying on Friday.

“I think this information is close to 100 percent,” the agency quoted Ozerov as saying. “The fact that Islamic State has still not shown him anywhere also adds to our confidence that al-Baghdadi has been killed.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday there was high degree of certainty that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was dead, RIA news agency reported.

Moscow said last week its forces may have killed the secretive Islamic State leader, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were skeptical.

The Russian defense ministry earlier said it was seeking confirmation that al-Baghdadi had been killed in a strike in late May near the Syrian city of Raqqa.

The air strike was launched after the Russian forces in Syria received intelligence that a meeting of Islamic State leaders was being planned, the ministry said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.

“On May 28, after drones were used to confirm the information on the place and time of the meeting of IS leaders, between 00:35 and 00:45, Russian air forces launched a strike on the command point where the leaders were located,” the statement said.

“According to the information which is now being checked via various channels, also present at the meeting was Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was eliminated as a result of the strike,” the ministry said.

The strike is believed to have killed several other senior leaders of the group, as well as around 30 field commanders and up to 300 of their personal guards, the Russian defense ministry statement said.

The IS leaders had gathered at the command center, in a southern suburb of Raqqa, to discuss possible routes for the militants’ retreat from the city, the statement said.

The United States was informed in advance about the place and time of the strike, the Russian military said.

Islamic State fighters are close to defeat in the twin capitals of the group’s territory, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

Russian forces support the Syrian government which is fighting against Islamic State mainly from the west, while a U.S.-led coalition supports Iraqi government forces fighting against Islamic State from the east.

The last public footage of Baghdadi shows him dressed in black clerical robes declaring his caliphate from the pulpit of Mosul’s medieval Grand al-Nuri mosque back in 2014.

Born Ibrahim al-Samarrai, Baghdadi is a 46-year-old Iraqi who broke away from al Qaeda in 2013, two years after the capture and killing of the group’s leader Osama bin Laden.

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