The leader of the Islamic State terror group released a new audio recording on Thursday to refute last weekend's claims by Iraq officials that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been either critically wounded or killed in an American air strike on Friday night, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadi media.
The online audiotape features the ISIS leader threatening the international coalition while stating that his militants will keep fighting until the last soldier drops dead, according to the message released by an ISIS-linked media group.
Given that the message does belong to the leader, then this will be his first public comments since the shadowy figure appeared on camera in July and said he was "cursed with this great endeavor. Obey me in my obedience to God, disobey me if I disobey God," New York Daily News reported.
In the new disturbing audio, he calls his supporters to "erupt volcanoes of jihad" and makes references to President Obama's Friday announcement that the U.S. will send 1,500 additional troops to Iraq to advise and support the fight against the terror group there, NBC News reported.
"O soldiers of the Islamic State, continue to harvest the soldiers," he says in the recording. "Erupt volcanoes of jihad everywhere. Light the Earth with fire. O Allah, deal with America and its allies. O Allah, harshen your grip on them ... Deal them the worst of defeats they will ever suffer. Divide their gatherings, split their body, dismember them completely and make us raid them and not them raid us."
At one point, Al-Baghdadi reportedly says that the weeks of coalition airstrikes against ISIS "have not prevented its advance, nor weakened its resolve."
"They will never abandon fighting," he says, reportedly of his own soldiers. "Even if only one soldier remained, they will never abandon fighting, because they defy humiliation and injustice. They will never abandon fighting, because they did not taste honor and dignity except by fighting ... They will be triumphant, even if only one man of them is left."
After taking over the terrorist group in 2010 and transforming it from a branch of al-Qaeda, Baghdadi, also known as Abu Du'a, has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.
"Abu Du'a is in charge of overseeing all [ISIS] operations and is currently based in Syria," the U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice wanted poster reads.
