Daesh leader wounded in Iraq: Sources

Iraqi sources say the leader of the Daesh terrorist group, Ibrahim al-Samarrai, also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been wounded in an airstrike in Iraq.

Iraqi Al Sumaria TV cited local sources in Iraq’s Nineveh Province as saying that Baghdadi and other Takfiri leaders were wounded in an airstrike on one of the terrorist group’s headquarters in an area 65 kilometers west of Nineveh, close to the Syrian border, on Thursday .

The Iraqi TV channel said al-Baghdadi, who was believed to be in the Daesh stronghold of Raqqah in Syria, was wounded by the explosion of a bomb released from a US-led coalition aircraft.

A US-led coalition, which purports to be striking Daesh targets in Syria and Iraq, said on Friday it could not confirm the report by the Iraqi TV channel.

A spokesman for the coalition, Army Col. Christopher Garver, said in an email that he had seen the reports but had “nothing to confirm this at this time.”

Earlier, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 30 civilians lost their lives when the US-led coalition launched an aerial attack purportedly against a position of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo.

Raqqah was overrun by Takfiri terrorists in March 2013. Syrian forces are now engaged in a military offensive to liberate the Daesh-held city.