Six aides to IS chief Baghdadi killed in airstrike on Iraq’s Anbar
Jet fighters
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) — Six top aides to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were killed Tuesday in an airstrike that targeted their 4×4 cars in the Iraqi province of Anbar, a military source was quoted as saying.
“Iraqi jet fighters, using intelligence information, targeted six Islamic State warlords, who used to aid the group’s chief Abdu Bakr al-Baghdadi, while driving 4×4 cars in the desert of of Ar-Rutbah, west of Anbar,” the source told the Arabic-language Alghad Press news website.
“The slain terrorists are implicated in several car bomb blasts in Nineveh, Salahuddin and Anbar provinces, in addition to launching an attack on a security checkpoint on the Iraqi-Syrian border,” the source said.
They are also behind the assassination of a number of officials and key figures in Ar-Rutbah district in recent years, the source noted.
No reports about al-Baghdadi have been heard since September 2017, when he urged supporters to wage attacks against the West and keep fighting in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
Al-Baghdadi emerged as leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the groups that later became Islamic State, in 2010. In October 2011, the US officially designated al-Baghdadi as a terrorist. It has offered a reward of up to $25m (£19.6m) for information leading to his capture or death.