New Delhi: Abu Hajar al-Sufi, the right-hand man of ISIS chief Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was killed in a US airstrike in Mosul, but the Pentagon has denied reports in social media that the ISIS chief has been killed.
The airstrike on the ISIS stronghold of Mosul killed at least two members of the group, including aAbu Hazar al-Sufi, aide to ISIS chief Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, according to the Iraqi defence ministry.
Reports that Baghdadi himself had been killed by a U.S. airstrike circulated in Turkish and Kurdish media Wednesday and were repeated by multiple Iraqi sources. But a Pentagon official denied that the ISIS leader was dead. "There is no validity to the rumor that we've killed Baghdadi," a senior defense official told The Daily Beast.
The Iraqi Defense Ministry announcement, first reported by al Arabayia, did not specify whether the airstrike was carried out by American or Iraqi forces, but NBC News reported that a senior security official confirmed it was a US airstrike.
The article does not clarify whether the security official is American or Iraqi but quotes them as saying that three ISIS leaders were killed, including Baghdadi's aide Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, an explosives specialist and commander in the town of Tal Afar.
There have been no public statements yet from U.S. officials on the reported airstrikes.
The United States has been consistently carrying out airstrikes on ISIS strongholds, and this is the first time that a senior ISIS leader has been directly targeted.
The rumors of Baghdadi's death that spread through northern Iraq yesterday may have been triggered by uncertainty over who died in the airstrikes that reportedly killed his aide. It's also possible that claim's of Baghdadi's death could have come from ISIS itself as part of a deception campaign to cover the leader's tracks and obscure his true status and whereabouts.
Multiple sources, including Kurdish intelligence officials and former Iraqi army officers, told The Daily Beast that Baghdadi had died somewhere in Syria after being wounded in a recent airstrike and fleeing Iraq to seek medical treatment.
This was not the first time that rumors of Baghdadi's death have surfaced.
There have been unverified claims about Baghdadi in the past too.
But the new reports that ISIS leaders were killed by airstrikes in Mosul, coming only a day after a flurry of claims about Baghdadi's death in Syria, suggests the group's leadership is increasingly becoming vulnerable and that Baghdadi may be on the run and seeking sanctuary in Syria where President Obama has not yet authorized military intervention.
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