No one really knows what is going on. The Iranians are saying he is dead. “ISIS leader Baghdadi is reportedly ‘unable to move’ after a spinal injury,” by Pamela Engel, Business Insider, April 27, 2015:
The head of the Islamic State is reportedly injured so badly he can barely move, Kareem Shaheen at The Guardian reports.”Sources tell us Baghdadi is still alive, but still unable to move due to spinal injury sustained in the March air strike,” Shaheen tweeted.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who last year declared himself caliph of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh), was reportedly wounded in a US-led airstrike in March.
Martin Chulov at The Guardian, who last week broke the news of the airstrike, also says his sources tell him Baghdadi is still alive and being treated by doctors from Mosul.
Information on Baghdadi’s reported injury and the airstrike that apparently caused it is still vague.
Two officials, one Western and one Iraqi, confirmed to The Guardian that the airstrike targeted multiple cars in the town of Baaj in northwestern Iraq on March 18, but the Pentagon said the airstrike was not aimed at a high-value target and that it had “no reason to believe it was Baghdadi.”
Chulov reports that officials didn’t know that Baghdadi was in one of the cars targeted in the airstrike. He was reportedly staying in that area of Iraq because he “knew from the war that the Americans did not have much cover there,” a source who is aware of Baghdadi’s movements told The Guardian….