American military officials are “skeptical” that one of their airstrikes in Syria has killed the leader of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, Ibrahim al-Samarrai, also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Al-Amaq, a news outlet affiliated with Daesh, reported al-Baghdadi’s death in a US-led attack on Sunday, claiming in a statement that the self-declared head of the terror group was killed in his hideout in the Syrian city of Raqqah.
“We have seen these types of reports before, here in Iraq and in other operations, and until we have confirmation, we are going to practice healthy skepticism,” Colonel Christopher Garver, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, told Fox News.
Counter-terrorism experts cast doubt on the document’s validity, with Charlie Winter, a senior research associate at Georgia State University, describing it as “one of the shoddiest fakes I have ever seen.”
Raqqah, on the northern bank of the Euphrates River, about 160 km east…