Russia's Defence Ministry said on Friday that it is verifying reports that one of its airstrikes killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on the southern outskirts of Syria's Raqqa.
"According to information which is verified through various channels, the meeting was also attended by the leader of ISIS, Ibrahim Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was also killed during the airstrike", the defense ministry says.
According to Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Friday's meeting that the strike on Raqqa had killed "over 100 militants, among which there were members of the IS leadership, presumably including (IS leader Abu Bakr) al-Baghdadi". Up to 200,000 people are still trapped in the Old City, Islamic State's besieged enclave in Mosul, lacking supplies and being used as human shields to obstruct the progress of Iraqi forces by a U.S-led global coalition.
The spokesman for the US -led anti-IS coalition said in a statement Friday he could not confirm the Russian claim.
The ministry's statement said the Russian airstrike may also have killed 330 terrorists, state-run Sputnik reported.
The Russian claims were not corroborated by the United States.
Officials had long described the ISIS leader as enemy No. 1 in the fight against ISIS, and speculation had swirled over his whereabouts.
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Fears grew for others, such Bassem Choukeir, his wife Nadia, her mother Sariyya and his three daughters Mirna, Fatmeh and Zaynab. Many people remain unaccounted for and officials are still not sure about the exact number of missing.
The audio message did not refer to Mosul specifically.
His only public appearance was in a video in June 2014, when he delivered a sermon in Mosul after ISIS took over the Iraqi city, the BBC reported.
He was killed in an August 2015 air strike by the United States in Iraq. Al-Obeidi is not a member.
He was freed in 2009, and within a year was the leader of Iraq's al Qaeda affiliate, heading up a renewed campaign of bombings and assassinations.
As the leader of ISIS, which has seized and lost swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, he earned a reputation for brutality.
Born Ibrahim al-Samarrai, Baghdadi is an Iraqi in his mid-forties, who broke away from al Qaeda in 2013 after years participating in the insurgency against USA forces in Iraq and the Iraqi government. The group has since horrified the world with its atrocities in areas they held as well as attacks they claimed around the world that killed hundreds.
The U.S. Department of State's Counter-Terrorism Rewards Program had put the same $25 million bounty on Bin Laden and Iraqi former president Saddam Hussein and the reward is still available for Bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
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