Russia claims to have killed Daesh leader, other militants

The secretive Daesh leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded.

Moscow said on Friday its forces may have killed Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria last month, but Washington said it could not corroborate the death and Western and Iraqi officials were sceptical.
The secretive Daesh leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since he declared a caliphate in Mosul in 2014, after leading his fighters on a sweep through northern Iraq.
If the report does prove true, it would be one of the biggest blows yet to Daesh, which is trying to defend its shrinking territory against an array of forces backed by regional and global powers in both Syria and Iraq.
But in the absence of independent confirmation, two US officials said US agencies were sceptical of the report. Several Iraqi security officials said Iraq was doubtful as well.
"His death has been reported so often that you have to be cautious till a formal Daesh statement comes," a European security official said.
US Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "We have no information to corroborate those reports."
The Russian Defence Ministry said on its Facebook page that it was checking information that Baghdadi was killed in the strike on the outskirts of Raqqa in Syria, launched after Russia received intelligence about a meeting of Daesh leaders.
"On May 28, after drones were used to confirm the information on the place and time of the meeting of Daesh leaders, between 00:35 and 00:45, Russian air forces launched a strike on the command point where the leaders were located," the statement said. However, a colonel with the Iraqi national security service said Baghdadi was not believed to have been in Raqqa at the time of the strike in late May.