WASHINGTON: Elusive Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi is probably still alive and likely hiding in the Middle Euphrates River Valley, a senior US general said Thursday.
“We’re looking for him every day. I don’t think he’s dead,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of the counter-Daesh coalition in Iraq and Syria, told reporters in a conference call.
Townsend admitted he didn’t “have a clue” where Baghdad is precisely, but believes he may have fled with many other Daesh soldiers into the Middle Euphrates region stretching from Syria to Iraq, after coalition and local force assaults on the Daesh bastions of Mosul, Raqqa and Tal Afar.
“The last stand of Daesh will be in the Middle Euphrates River Valley,” Townsend said.
“When we find him, I think we’ll just try to kill him first. It’s probably not worth all the trouble to try and capture him.”
With a $25 million US bounty on his head, Iraq-born Baghdadi has successfully avoided an intense effort to seek him out for six years or more.
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a longtime conflict monitor, said in mid-June that it had heard from senior Daesh leaders in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province that Baghdadi was dead.
Russia’s army said in mid-June that it was seeking to verify whether it had killed him in a May air strike in Syria.
“I’ve seen no convincing evidence, intelligence, or open-source or other rumor or otherwise that he’s dead.... There are also some indicators in intelligence channels that he’s still alive,” said Townsend.
Daesh chief Baghdadi likely still alive: US general
Daesh chief Baghdadi likely still alive: US general
US lawmaker Fine criticized by rights advocates, Democrats after anti-Muslim remarks
- Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others
WASHINGTON: Rights advocates and multiple Democrats on Tuesday condemned anti-Muslim comments by Republican US Representative Randy Fine who said on Sunday that “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Fine, whose comments against Muslims have often sparked outrage, has dismissed the criticism and since doubled down on his remarks on social media. The Council on American-Islamic Relations designated the Republican US lawmaker from Florida as an anti-Muslim extremist last year.
“If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” Fine said on X on Sunday in a post that had over 40 million views as of Tuesday afternoon.
Some high-profile Democrats including California Governor Gavin Newsom called for him to resign while House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Fine an “Islamophobic, disgusting and unrepentant bigot.”
Jeffries also called for Republicans — who hold a majority in both chambers of Congress — to hold Fine accountable.
“To ignore this is to accept and normalize it,” Democratic US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. Fine’s past comments include calling for the mass expulsion of all Muslims from the US, labeling of Muslims as “terrorists” and the mocking of the starvation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, among others. Rights advocates have noted a rise in Islamophobia in the US in recent years due to a range of factors including hard-line immigration policies and white-supremacist rhetoric, as well as the fallout of Israel’s war in Gaza on American society.
