NEWS CENTER - The Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed, said US President Donald Trump announced on Sunday.

 

 

The Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed, said US President Donald Trump announced on Sunday.

 

Trump said the “impeccable”, 2-hour operation was conducted on Saturday night in the province of Idlib, one of the last areas of the country still outside Syrian regime control, and that US officials had confirmed Baghdadi, 48, was among those killed.

 

Trump also said that Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest and killed himself and three of his children. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place.”

 

Trump thanked Kurds, Iraqis, Syria, Russia and Turkey and added: "Baghdadi was a sick and depraved man, and now he is dead."

 

SDF General Commander Mazlum Abdi said on Twitter that “it was a successful and historical operation that was the result of a joint intelligence work with the United States."

 

Abdi added that Baghdadi, "had been eliminated after 5 months of intelligence. We thank everyone who contributed to the operation."

 

Who was al-Baghdadi

 

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose real name was Awad al-Bedri is thought to have been born in the central Iraqi city of Samarra in 1971. He rose to command al-Qaeda’s Iraqi division and then broke away to form the Islamic State.

 

In July 2014, shortly after ISIS said it had established a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, Baghdadi delivered a sermon from a mosque in the captured Iraqi city of Mosul. Appearing unmasked for the first time, he declared himself to be the caliph: the political and religious leader of the global Muslim community.

 

ISIS occupied territories in both iraq and Syria and began its decline with the resistance and liberation of Kobane carried out by the YPG/YPJ in 2015.