Iraq claims killing of 13 Daesh leaders during meeting with Baghdadi

The Iraqi military said yesterday its warplanes hit a house where senior leaders of Daesh were meeting, killing 13.

The military released a statement claiming the airstrike took place on Saturday as the group’s leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was meeting with senior Daesh commanders.

The statement said Al-Baghdadi, whose real name is Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad Al-Badri Al-Samarrai, moved last week in a convoy from Raqqa, in Syria, to the region of Al-Qaim, on the Iraqi side of the border, to discuss “the collapse happening in Mosul and to choose his successor”.

The military released a list of the 13 dead commanders; however Al-Baghdadi’s name was not on a list.

The Iraqi security forces announced multiple times last year that they had hit Al-Baghdadi during aerial bombings in the Anbar and Nineveh, but the United States denied the validity of the news.