Pentagon officials expressed skepticism on Sunday over Iraqi officials' claims that the top leader of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been either critically wounded or killed in an American air strike on Friday night, New York Daily News reported. It remains unclear how badly Baghdadi was hurt, if at all.
After statements were issued on Saturday by Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries stating that the head of the terrorist organization had been wounded in western Anbar Province, several witnesses confirmed that airstrikes had been targeted against the town of al-Qaim where a meeting of several high-ranking ISIS leaders was being hosted.
Baghdadi was part of the militant meeting in Qaim, an Interior Ministry intelligence official told the Associated Press. But Defense Minister Khalid Obeidi took to Facebook to say that although Baghdadi had been wounded, it was in the northern city of Mosul and not where the air strikes had been launched.
"The information is from unofficial sources and was not confirmed until now, and we are working on that," an Iraqi official told The Telegraph.
While the U.S. Central Command confirmed that they had conducted strikes against a "gathering of [ISIS] leaders," representatives could not confirm whether the self-proclaimed "Caliph" was among those attending.
"We have no information to corroborate reports that al-Baghdadi has been injured," a U.S. Central Command spokesman, Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, said Sunday, with a defense official adding that Iraq has a reputation for exaggeration.
Additionally, Pentagon officials claimed they had no immediate information on such an attack or whether the militant leader was injured.
"I can't absolutely confirm that Baghdadi has been killed," General Nicholas Houghton, the chief of staff of the British armed forces, stated in a Sunday BBC interview. "Probably it will take some days to have absolute confirmation."
The bombing of the ISIS meeting locale, a strategic supply center for ISIS forces in both Iraq and Syria, is reported to have resulted in the deaths of over a dozen individuals.
Meanwhile, "a counterterrorism source who tracks terrorist social media told Fox News on Sunday that there was a spike in chatter from accounts linked to known ISIS members and followers. The messages said al-Baghdadi had been killed or injured in the airstrikes, but some accounts alleged that it was a rumor designed by the U.S. to force al-Baghdadi to make a 'proof of life' assertion and reveal more information about his location," according to Fox News.
The conflicting reports of Baghdadi's wounding came as President Obama said the U.S.-led coalition was about to go on the offensive against the Islamic State militants, who have seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, massacred thousands of people, beheaded Westerners and drawn U.S. troops and warplanes back into the region.
"Rather than just try to halt ISIL's momentum, we're now in a position to start going on some offense," Obama said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"The airstrikes have been very effective in degrading ISIL's capabilities and slowing the advance that they were making," he added. "Now what we need is ground troops - Iraqi ground troops - that can start pushing them back."
After taking over the terrorist group in 2010 and transforming it from a branch of al-Qaeda, Baghdadi has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.
