Iran’s state news agency quoted a representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday as saying Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was “definitely dead”. “Terrorist Baghdadi is definitely dead,” IRNA quoted cleric Ali Shirazi, representative to the Quds Force, as saying, without elaborating. Iranian Foreign Ministry officials were not available to comment on the report of Baghdadi’s death. The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since he declared a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from a mosque in Mosul in 2014, after his fighters seized large areas of northern Iraq. Russia said on June 17 its forces might have killed Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria.

Source: Hindustan Times June 29, 2017 19:30 UTC