Daesh leader al-Baghdadi ‘highly likely’ eliminated: Russian Foreign Ministry

Russia’s Foreign Ministry says it is “highly likely” that the leader of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, Ibrahim al-Samarrai aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been killed in an airstrike carried out by the Russian Air Force in Syria last month.

“It is highly likely that Daesh [leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi was eliminated in an airstrike of the Russian Air Force on a militant command post in a southern suburb of the city of Raqqah in late May,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov told Sputnik news agency on Thursday.

Syromolotov added that the information about Baghdadi’s death was now being verified through “various channels.”

The senior Russian official noted that the death of the terrorist group’s leader would likely lead to the disorganization of Daesh, stressing that efforts aimed at inflicting the ultimate defeat on the extremists should continue.

On June 16, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Baghdadi might have been among a group of terrorist leaders attending a so-called Daesh military council, and killed in a Russian strike of Syria’s militant-held city of Raqqah, which serves as the terrorists’ de facto capital in Syria, on May 28.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later stated that he could not give firm proof that the Baghdadi had indeed been killed.

Baghdadi announced the forming of the group’s so-called caliphate at Grand al-Nuri Mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul back in 2014.

Daesh extremists blew up the 12th-century Hadba (Hunchback) minaret along with the Grand al-Nuri Mosque late on Wednesday.

Iraqi authorities and officials from the US-led coalition ostensibly fighting Daesh terrorists said the destruction of the site, sometimes referred to as Iraq’s Tower of Pisa, was a sign of the extremists’ imminent loss of Mosul.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi described the destruction an “official declaration of defeat.”