ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi wounded in airstrike, Iraq officials say
Iraqi officials said Sunday that the head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was wounded in an airstrike in western Anbar province. Pentagon officials said they had no immediate information on such an attack or on the militant leader being injured. Iraq's Defence and Interior ministries both issued statements […]Iraqi officials said Sunday that the head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was wounded in an airstrike in western Anbar province. Pentagon officials said they had no immediate information on such an attack or on the militant leader being injured. Iraq's Defence and Interior ministries both issued statements saying al-Baghdadi had been wounded, without elaborating, and the news was broadcast on state-run television Sunday night.
The reports came at a time when U.S. President Barack Obama said the U.S.-led coalition was in a position to start going on the offensive against the ISIS militants. Al-Baghdadi, believed to be in his early 40s, has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. Since taking the reins of the group in 2010, he has transformed it from a local branch of al-Qaida into an independent transnational military force.
