Iraqi Media Claims Islamic State ‘Caliph’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Poisoned

This file image made from video posted on a militant website Saturday, July 5, 2014, which
AP Photo/Militant video, File

The UK Daily Mail relays a report from Iraqi news agency WAA that the “caliph” of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and three other ISIS commanders have been poisoned and “have been transferred to an unknown location under strict measures.”

The report, which should be taken with a grain of salt, claims “caliph” Baghdadi and his associates took their lunch with a few grains of poison. They were supposedly having lunch in the Iraqi village of Be’aj when the assassination attempt occurred.

Numerous previous reports that Baghdadi was killed or wounded by airstrikes have proven false. The ISIS leader keeps his whereabouts secret and makes few public appearances, so reports of his death tend to linger a while.

A report in March that Baghdadi had been seriously injured by an airstrike claimed he was in the same Iraqi village, which is located in a sparsely-populated area convenient to the Islamic State’s Syrian capital of Raqqa.

The Economic Times of India spotted the Baghdadi poisoning claim repeated in several “Arabic-language and Iranian news sites,” as well as Iraq’s WAA agency.

According to these reports, the Islamic State is currently conducting a manhunt for the poisoners.

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