Fighter jets from a United States-led coalition hit a gathering of leaders of the Islamic State jihadist group in north-western Iraq, and Iraqi officials said they believed that a number of top militants had been killed, New York Times reported on Sunday.
Two Iraqi officials said that at least one strike had targeted a meeting near the town of Qaim, which is in Anbar province, just across the border from the Syrian town of Bukamal. The area is in the desert heartland of the territory the group has seized for its self-declared caliphate.
Both officials said that the strikes had killed many militants from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, including two of its regional governors. Rumours also swirled that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been at the meeting and was either wounded or killed. The officials said they had no confirmed information about al-Baghdadi’s presence at the meeting.
A US Defense Department official confirmed that coalition aircraft had carried out an air attack “against what was assessed to be a gathering of ISIL leaders,” but said the strike had been near Mosul, which is 180 miles from Qaim. The discrepancy in the reported locations could not be immediately explained.
The defense official also said there had been no confirmation that al-Baghdadi was present at the meeting.
If confirmed, the death of high-ranking Islamic State leaders would be a blow to the group and would indicate that the United States and its allies have a means of tracking some of its most important figures.
The Iraqi officials said they believed that the dead included the Islamic State ruler, or wali, of Anbar province, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Muhannad al-Sweidawi, and the ruler of Deir el-Zour province in Syria, Abu Zahra al-Mahamdi.
Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi researcher and an expert on the group, said that he, too, had heard that both men were dead, and that their killings would constitute a new threat to the group.
Hashimi said that Sweidawi, like many of the group’s top leaders, had served in the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein and joined al-Qaida after Hussein’s fall from power. Like al-Baghdadi, he had been detained by US forces, but later released, Hashimi said.
The Islamic State did not immediately issue any statement on the strikes.
