Top IS leaders confirm death of chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, says Syrian monitor

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor on Tuesday said that ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead. The monitor said that it had information from top Islamic State group leaders confirming the death of the jihadist organisation’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“Top tier commanders from IS who are present in Deir Ezzor province have confirmed the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, emir of the Islamic State group, to the Observatory,” director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

“We learned of it today but we do not know when he died or how.”

It is not first time that reports of IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi being dead has come to the fore. On June 11, 2017, Syrian state TV had claimed al-Baghdadi has been killed in a US-backed airstrike.

Prior to that, there were almost more than 5 occasions when reports of IS chief being dead surfaced.

With PTI inputs

Also read: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: Not his first death, know about past claims on his life by various nations