Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State, may be dead. This was stated by the Russian Defense Ministry, explaining that the number one of the IS would have been killed in a raid by the military air force in Moscow. The news, reported by the Tass agency, is not officially confirmed.
The Russian ministry specifies that the raid took place in the southern suburbs of Raqqa on 28 May. The Kremlin is looking for confirmation, also because Ibrahim al-Samarrai - a 46-year-old Iraqi, the true identity of the caliph - has been presumed dead or seriously injured several times since the international community intervened militarily to neutralize the Islamic State.
A few days ago, Syrian state television also said that al-Baghdadi would have died in an air raid on Raqqa. "According to information that is being verified through various channels", reports the Russian Defense Ministry, quoted by the online site of the Zvezda ministry's TV, a meeting between ISIS leaders was underway in the southern suburb of Raqqa and "it was also present was the leader of Isis Ibrahim Abu-Bakr Al Baghdadi, who was eliminated following the raid".
The Russian Defense statement also specifies that the US command had been informed of that raid, decided after the command of the Russian military contingent in Syria had "received information at the end of May about a meeting of the leaders of the Islamic State terrorist organization which would held in the southern suburbs of Raqqa”. It was later discovered that the "purpose of that summit was the organization of convoys to bring ISIS fighters out of Raqqa through the so-called southern corridor".
The Russian ministry then provides further details: the raid, preceded by the reconnaissance flight of a drone, started "at 0,35 am on May 28 Moscow time" and lasted ten minutes. The operation would have led to the killing of many "senior leaders" of ISIS, of "about thirty military leaders and at least 300 militiamen" concludes the note.
