Conjecture doing the rounds about the Caliphate set up by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is that the most dangerous criminal leader has asked his troops to either leave Iraq or self-detonate.
The source of the news comes from Al-Arabiya, an online news portal, which quoted the Iraqi governorate of Nineveh and the Iraqi TV network Alsumaria. In what was a ‘farewell speech’ Baghdadi asked his men to clear the last reigning city of ISIS, Mosul, and promised them ’72 women in heaven.’
The city was on the verge of capture by the US backed Iraqi army, who made a major assault to retake move on Mosul on 17th October 2016 and followed it up by intruding into the Caliphate this January. Iraqi forces captured the eastern side of Mosul after 100 days of fighting and launched their attack on the districts that lie west of the Tigris river on February 19.
Although the exact location of the leader is unknown, with 10 million US dollars as a bounty on his head, this move is not to be taken lightly said many experts. In their viewpoint, this might be a small break from the doctrine might relapse to take the land back again and the government troops must be fully prepared to fight them back or exhaust the extremist group completely. As for Baghdadi, he is said to have been injured in multiple attacks to drive out ISIS forces from Syria and Iraq. But this isn’t the first time news of the leader being attacked has come out. He has been bombed and poisoned many a time.
As we wait for an official confirmation, for now, there seems to be peace starting to reign back on the tortured land of Iraq.
