U.S. and Iraqi officials were scrambling Sunday night to determine the extent of injuries suffered by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi amid conflicting reports that the terrorist leader had been wounded over the weekend by an airstrike in western Iraq.
Devastating injuries to al-Baghdadi would be a major development amid criticism that the bombing campaign by the U.S. and regional allies has failed to contain the extremist group. Islamic State militants have continued to advance on separate fronts near Baghdad in Iraq and toward the Turkish border in Syria.
Supporters of the terrorist leader claimed al-Baghdadi was “alive and well” Sunday, but local sources said he was clinging to life.
A coalition airstrike pounded a convoy of vehicles in the nation’s restive Anbar province. Several reports indicated that a top aide to al-Baghdadi was killed in the bombing.
Although the success of the military mission remains to be seen, it marks the closest strike that U.S. officials have publicly acknowledged against the terrorist group’s reclusive senior leadership since it declared a caliphate in June. To this point, the U.S.-led bombing campaign had been working in support of Kurdish and Iraqi troops to dislodge Islamic State fighters from positions in northern and western Iraq.
U.S. officials have told The Washington Times during recent weeks that a killing of al-Baghdadi would signal a significant turning point in the growing, U.S.-led war against the Islamic State, the Sunni Muslim extremist movement in Syria and Iraq also known as ISIL and ISIS.
A U.S.-led coalition has been launching airstrikes on Islamic State militants and facilities in Iraq and Syria for months. Obama administration officials say the strategy is to beat back the fighters to give Iraqi government forces adequate time and space to mount a more effective ground offensive.
On Friday, President Obama authorized the deployment of up to 1,500 more American troops to bolster the Iraqi forces, including in Anbar province, where fighting with the extremists has been fierce. The plan could boost the total number of American troops in Iraq to 3,100. About 1,400 U.S. troops are now in Iraq after a previous authorization of 1,600.
The elusive, cutthroat and unconditionally feared al-Baghdadi has had a $10 million State Department bounty on his head since 2011 but has remained largely out of the global spotlight in recent months. In June, his followers shocked the world by overtaking the city of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest urban zone, and subsequently seizing control of a vast stretch of territory straddling the Syria-Iraq border, just south of Turkey.
During the months since, U.S. national security community sources have compared al-Baghdadi to a kind of new-era Osama bin Laden. But where images of bin Laden wearing a signature beard, turban and flowing white robes became known around the globe after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, al-Baghdadi’s rise has been as shadowy as it has been bloody.
His followers revere him as a religious leader. Believed to be in his early-40s, al-Baghdadi holds a doctorate from the Islamic University of Baghdad.
Few photographs of al-Baghdadi exist, and he is purported to have made only one public appearance in recent months.
U.S. intelligence officials confirmed in July that al-Baghdadi had delivered a sermon at Mosul’s Great Mosque five days after his group declared the establishment of an Islamic state, or caliphate, in the territories it holds in Iraq and Syria.
The group proclaimed al-Baghdadi as its leader and demanded that all Muslims pledge allegiance to him.
U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence officials say al-Baghdadi’s power began expanding dramatically in 2012 when he masterminded the rise of al Qaeda-style extremism among rebels fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. By 2013, the officials say, al-Baghdadi’s fighters were seizing control of Syrian oil fields and drawing revenue by smuggling the crude to black-market buyers in Turkey.
David S. Cohen, the U.S. Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told reporters in Washington last month that with the exception of a handful of state-sponsored militant groups, al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State had emerged as likely the “best-funded terrorist organization” in the world.
Prior to the onset of the U.S.-led airstrike campaign this summer, U.S. officials say, the Islamic State group was raising $1 million a day from black-market oil sales and raised $20 million in ransoms over the past year and millions of dollars more a month by extorting cash from wealthy citizens of Syria and Iraq.
Details about the airstrike that reportedly injured al-Baghdadi were trickling out Sunday night.
Pentagon officials said they had no immediate information about whether al-Baghdadi was wounded, but Iraq’s Defense and Interior ministries issued statements saying the terrorist leader had been hurt.
The statements offered no elaboration, but an Interior Ministry intelligence official told The Associated Press that al-Baghdadi was hit during a meeting Saturday with militants in the town of Qaim in Anbar province.
Citing informants within the militant group, the official told the AP that the strike wounded al-Baghdadi. A senior Iraqi military official also said he learned in operational meetings that al-Baghdadi had been wounded.
Both officials said the operation was carried out by Iraqi security forces. Neither knew the extent of al-Baghdadi’s apparent injuries.
Separately, U.S. military officials told reporters over the weekend that the international coalition of fighter jets pounding targets in Syria and Iraq during recent weeks had specifically targeted senior Islamic State leaders near Mosul on Friday night.
The officials claimed that the strikes had killed 50 people but would not confirm whether al-Baghdadi was with the group that had been targeted.
Adding to the uncertainty over al-Baghdadi’s status were varied reports in the Arab media. The regional Al Arabiya News Channel cited “tribal sources” Saturday as saying al-Baghdadi had been “critically wounded” by a U.S.-led airstrike on the town of Qaim.
By Sunday, however, various reports were citing Twitter activity by people believed to be associated closely with the Islamic State movement as saying al-Baghdadi was doing just fine.
One tweet purported to be by spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani said al-Baghdadi “is well, thank God,” but also wished him “a speedy recovery” — a “confirmation” that the terrorist leader was in some way injured.
Another tweet, by “State of Islam,” an account reportedly aligned with the al-Baghdadi, said only that he “is alive and well.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.