Baghdad: Iraqi security forces claimed Sunday to have struck the convoy of Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi in an air raid near the country’s border with Syria.
“The Iraqi air force carried out a heroic operation targeting the convoy of the criminal terrorist Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi,” Iraq’s security forces said in a joint statement.
“His health status is unknown,” it said, adding that the leader of Daesh was “transported in a vehicle” after the strike.
Iraqi security sources have previously said Al Baghdadi had been injured or killed in past strikes, but such claims were either never verified or later denied.
The statement was released by the “war media cell”, a structure which provides updates on the war against Daesh on behalf of the interior and defence ministries as well as the paramilitary Popular Mobilisation forces.
Iraqi aircraft struck Al Baghdadi’s convoy as it was “moving towards Karbala to attend a meeting of the Daesh terrorist leaders”, the statement said.
“The meeting place was also bombed and many of those leaders were killed and wounded,” it said, adding that it would later release names.
Karbala is located on the Euphrates river barely five kilometres from the border with Syria.
Interior ministry spokesman Sa’ad Ma’an told AFP that “the strike was yesterday (Saturday) at noon.”
It said the operation was conducted in coordination with Iraq’s interior ministry intelligence services and the joint operation command centre that includes military advisers from the US-led coalition.
The health and whereabouts of Baghdadi, who has a $10 million US bounty on his head, are the subject of constant speculation.
He was reported wounded multiple times over the past year and his apparent survival has only added to mystery surrounding the Daesh chief.
According to an official Iraqi government document, Al Baghdadi was born in Samarra in 1971 and has four children with his first wife - two boys and two girls born between 2000 and 2008.
An Iraqi intelligence report indicates Al Baghdadi, who it says has a PhD in Islamic studies and was a professor at Tikrit University, also married a second woman, with whom he had another son.
Al Baghdadi apparently joined the insurgency that erupted after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, at one point spending time in an American military prison in the country’s south.
Al Baghdadi has only appeared once in public since taking the helm of the movement, in June 2014 at a mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
In his sermon, he asked all Muslims to obey him and join the caliphate.
