Free Republic

MOSCOW — Russia’s military said on Friday that it was looking into whether one of its airstrikes in the Syrian desert had killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared caliph of the Islamic State. In a statement, the Defense Ministry said that the Russian Air Force struck a meeting of Islamic State leaders on May 28 outside Raqqa, Syria, the group’s de facto capital, possibly killing Mr. Baghdadi.

ISIS leader Abu Bkr al-Baghdadi 'killed in Syrian air strike' The leader of Islamic State has been killed in an air strike in Syria, according to unverified reports in Syrian state media. Claims suggest the leader of ISIS Abu Bkr al-Baghdadi was killed in an air strike on Saturday. Heavy artillery was dropped across the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa throughout the day, with footage online posted by ISIS news agency Amaq revealing the devastation caused..... The revelation has emerged as Iraqi forces claimed al-Baghdadi’s deputy, Ayad al-Jumaili, was killed in an air strike near Iraq’s border with Syria.. Jumaili, an...

The leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic State has been killed in an air strike in Syria, according Syrian state media. News reports from Syria say the leader of ISIS Abu Bkr al-Baghdadi was killed in an air strike on Saturday. Heavy artillery has been dropped across the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa city today, with footage posted online by pro-ISIS news agency Amaq showing damage caused on the city and its surroundings. UPDATES TO FOLLOW

Yet another top military leader for the Islamic State, or ISIS, was exposed as having been trained by the U.S. government — this one as recently as 2014 and on American soil, according to media reports confirmed as accurate by the U.S. State Department. The ISIS military leader also said in a video that he was secretly trained in Russia.The terror leader in question, Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov (shown), who is originally of Tajikistan, is the new “minister of war” for ISIS, according to Iraq News and other sources. He took over ISIS forces after the previous U.S. government-trained ISIS military...

Meet Abu Omar al-Shishani, or, “Omar the Chechen.” Al-Shishani is Islamic State’s “minister of war,” and on March 4, the US tried to kill him.Initially, reports indicated that an airstrike in the northeastern Syrian town of Shaddadi likely succeeded in “eliminating” the militant. But “on-the-ground” intelligence from London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (who else?) suggested that in fact, al-Shishani was still alive and had been transported to Raqqa where he was being treated for serious injuries.Fast forward to Monday and we find out that even if al-Shishani isn’t technically dead, he is now “clinically dead,” which according to...

The U.S.-led coalition killed multiple figures within ISIS senior leadership over the last few weeks, including an operative closely linked to the ringleader of the November attacks in Paris, the spokesman for the coalition said Tuesday. Col. Steve Warren said 10 senior ISIS leaders operating in both Iraq and Syria, "including several external attack planners," with designs on attacking western targets, had been killed in airstrikes. Charaffe al Mouadan, a Syrian-based member of ISIS with a "direct link" to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian-born ringleader of the terror attacks in Paris, was killed in a December 24 airstrike, and was "actively...

The top ISIS leader in Afghanistan and Pakistan was killed in a U.S. drone strike, Afghan intelligence officials told The Washington Post. The air assault is said to have killed Hafiz Saeed Khan, a former Pakistani Taliban commander who became affiliated with the ISIS terror group in January. At least 30 other militants were reportedly killed in the strike. The paper quoted Afghanistan’s intelligence agency as saying the ISIS leader was killed Friday in the Achin district of Nangahar Province.

The leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been seriously wounded in an air strike in western Iraq, sources have told the Guardian. A source in Iraq with connections to the terror group revealed that Baghdadi suffered serious injuries during an attack by the US-led coalition in March. The source said Baghdadi’s wounds were at first life-threatening, but he has since made a slow recovery. He has not, however, resumed day-to-day control of the organisation.

It’s the first hint of an escalated American presence in Iraq since President Obama dispatched 300 U.S. military advisers there in June, after ISIS, (also known as the Islamic State), captured large portions of northern Iraq in a shock offensive coordinated with other Sunni militant groups. The Islamic State’s rise may have seemed sudden, but the group – which grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq – has been rebuilding for years. Even before U.S. forces left Iraq in 2011, ISIS was forging a professional military force, stirring up Sunni unrest, mounting nationwide bombing campaigns, and killing Iraqi officials. To find out more...