Islamic State’s Baghdadi returns to Iraq, likely to be in western desert: Source
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Speaking to the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, the source said “Baghdadi moved to Syria before end of the liberation battles in Nineveh. He settled to Raqqa in Syria, before moving to Qaim in Iraq.”
The Iraqi intelligence, according to the source, who preferred anonymity, “receives information about places to which Baghdadi heads. However, his exact location is not identified.”
Baghdadi “moved to Syria once again before liberating Qaim then returned back to western Iraq in the wake of heated battles in Syria and losing most of the cities that the group was controling.”
The source also added that “Baghdadi cannot move freely between the two countries like he used to.”
Both Iraqi and U.S.-led Coalition jets “tried to target him more than once, without locating his place well,” the source said. “The Iraqi intelligence located the house, where Baghdadi supposedly existed in Mosul, and carried out an airstrike but it was revealed later that the house was for camouflage.”
The Russian agency Sputnik quoted, in January, several experts in Islamist groups affairs as saying that Baghdadi is likely to be in Africa, being the safest place at the meantime for the militant group.