Ibrahim Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi

This few minutes from ‘youtube’ of a total of an 18-minute video from the Al Furqan ISIS network, released by them on Monday 29th April, shows clearly Baghdadi is alive.

Back in June last year the Russian Ministry of Defence published a claim that a meeting of ISIS commanders in May in the then besieged ISIS ‘capital’ of Raqqa included no less a person than ISIS’s leader – Ibrahim Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi – himself.
The meeting was apparently called to plan the escape of ISIS’s top leaders from Raqqa.  Of these the most important obviously is Al-Baghdadi himself, which was presumably why he attended the meeting.

@media(max-width: 600px) {.adace_adsense_59f38bad125b1 {display:block !important;}}
@media(min-width: 601px) {.adace_adsense_59f38bad125b1 {display:block !important;}}
@media(min-width: 801px) {.adace_adsense_59f38bad125b1 {display:block !important;}}
@media(min-width: 961px) {.adace_adsense_59f38bad125b1 {display:block !important;}}

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

@media(max-width: 600px) {.adace_adsense_59d25b0a51905 {display:block !important;}}
@media(min-width: 601px) {.adace_adsense_59d25b0a51905 {display:block !important;}}
@media(min-width: 801px) {.adace_adsense_59d25b0a51905 {display:block !important;}}
@media(min-width: 961px) {.adace_adsense_59d25b0a51905 {display:block !important;}}

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

A report by the Russian Interfax news agency dated 1st August 2017 timed 11:37 suggests that the Russians also are now starting to doubt that Ibrahim Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, ISIS’s self-proclaimed “Caliph”, was really killed in a Russian air strike on Raqqa as was previously claimed.
The report reads as follows

11:37
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Naryshkin doesn’t confirm al-Baghdadi’s death

The Iraqi authorities on Sunday cast doubt on claims that the ISIS leader and purported ‘Caliph’ Ibrahim Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi is actually dead following his reported death in a Russian air strike on Raqqa.

A couple of weeks ago the Russian Defence Ministry circulated reports that the leader of ISIS and its self-styled ‘Caliph’ – the man who previously called himself Ibrahim Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi – had been killed in a Russian air strike on a building in Raqqa where a number of top ISIS commanders where holding a meeting.
The Russians have since claimed that as well as Al-Baghdadi thirty other top ISIS commanders and 300 ISIS fighters were also killed in the air strike.

Over the last 24 hours the Iraqi army has reduced the tiny ISIS controlled pocket in the Old City of Mosul further in size, that it now spans just one square mile, and that it is now about to be cut in half.
Reports a few days ago spoke of no more than 300 ISIS fighters still alive and fighting in the city.  With all of them completely trapped in a warren of streets in a tiny area of Mosul’s Old City the end is likely to be only days away.

ISIS’s destruction of the Great Mosque of Mosul continues the trail of destruction with which ISIS has become associated since its formation.  It is a cultural tragedy of appalling proportions, destroying one of the great monuments of Islamic Arab architecture and art.

Russian President Putin received a report from Russian Defence Minister Shoigu yesterday during a meeting of Russia’s Security Council concerning the claims that a Russian air strike might have killed the ISIS leader Ibrahim Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
The report of the meeting on the Kremlin’s website is careful not to repeat this claim or even to mention Al-Baghdadi’s name