UPDATE: Yet another false alarm.
——
We have heard this before:
Iraqi Isis Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ‘Severely Injured and Flees to Syria’ International Business Times, July 5, 2014
ISIS terror chief ‘believed dead’: Iraqi military confirm warlord WAS injured in US-led airstrike as speculation grows feared jihadist perished in attack,” Daily Mail, November 9, 2014
So is he really wounded this time? Maybe. Or maybe he will pop up again.
“Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ‘seriously wounded in air strike,'” by Martin Chulov and Kareem Shaheen, Guardian, April 21, 2015:
The leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been seriously wounded in an air strike in western Iraq, sources have told the Guardian.
A source in Iraq with connections to the terror group revealed that Baghdadi suffered serious injuries during an attack by the US-led coalition in March. The source said Baghdadi’s wounds were at first life-threatening, but he has since made a slow recovery. He has not, however, resumed day-to-day control of the organisation.
Baghdadi’s wounding led to urgent meetings of Isis leaders, who initially believed he would die and made plans to name a new leader.
Two separate officials – a western diplomat and an Iraqi adviser – separately confirmed the strike took place on 18 March in the al-Baaj a district of Nineveh, close to the Syrian border. There had been two previous reports in November and December of Baghdadi being wounded, though neither was accurate.
The diplomat confirmed an air strike on a three-car convoy had taken place on that date between the village of Umm al-Rous and al-Qaraan. The attack targeted local Isis leaders and is believed to have killed three men. Officials did not know at the time that Baghdadi was in one of the cars.
Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi official who advises Baghdad on Isis, told the Guardian: “Yes, he was wounded in al-Baaj near the village of Umm al-Rous on 18 March with a group that was with him.”
Baghdadi is understood to have been spending much of his time in al-Baaj, about 200 miles west of the Isis stronghold of Mosul. “He chose this area because he knew from the war that the Americans did not have much cover there,” said a source privy to some of Baghdadi’s movements. “From 2003 (the US military) barely had a presence there. It was the one part of Iraq that they hadn’t mapped out.”
Al-Baaj, a Sunni tribal area, has long remained outside of state control even under ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s regime, and was considered a safe haven for jihadists from 2004 onwards.
Residents have long used smuggling networks as well as small valleys and tracks to import goods from nearby Syria and to other parts of Sunni areas of Iraq in Nineveh and Anbar. Al-Qaida in Iraq and all its subsequent incarnations, including Isis, had largely unfettered access to the routes until al-Baaj became a focus of US surveillance earlier this year.
Baghdadi had at least one earlier brush with death when US jets attacked a two-car convoy on the outskirts of Mosul on 14 December. His close aide Auf Abdul Rahman al-Efery was killed when a rocket fired from a war plane hit one of the cars. Baghdadi was believed to be in the second car, which was not hit….