US ‘skeptical’ about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death reports
American military officials are “skeptical” that one of their airstrikes in Syria has killed the leader of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, Ibrahim al-Samarrai, also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Al-Amaq, a news outlet affiliated with Daesh, reported al-Baghdadi’s death in a US-led attack on Sunday, claiming in a statement that the self-declared head of the terror group was killed in his hideout in the Syrian city of Raqqah.
“We have seen these types of reports before, here in Iraq and in other operations, and until we have confirmation, we are going to practice healthy skepticism,” Colonel Christopher Garver, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, told Fox News.
Counter-terrorism experts cast doubt on the document’s validity, with Charlie Winter, a senior research associate at Georgia State University, describing it as “one of the shoddiest fakes I have ever seen.”
Raqqah, on the northern bank of the Euphrates River, about 160 km east of Aleppo, was overrun by Takfiri terrorists in March 2013, and in 2014 was proclaimed the center for most of the terrorists’ administrative and control tasks.
The report came days after local sources in Iraq’s Nineveh Province told Iraqi al-Sumaria TV on Friday that the al-Baghdadi was wounded in an area 65 kilometers west of Nineveh, close to the Syrian border.
The US-led coalition, which purports to be striking Daesh targets in Syria and Iraq since 2014, could not confirm that rumor either.
Al-Baghdadi’s death reports took another spin earlier this week, when another source claimed he died in Iraq’s Mosul - another Daesh-held stronghold.
Such claims are not new and have emerged in the past only to be debunked by officials later.
However, the White House took a more cautious tone, refusing to reject any of the rumors.
"We have seen the reports and are looking into them," White House National Security Council Spokesman Ned Price said.
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