The US-led coalition battling the so-called Islamic State does not have concrete information about whether the group's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead or alive, the senior US general leading the campaign has said.
"Despite all the helpful reports to us from every source imaginable, I'm unable to confirm or deny either where he is or whether he is alive or dead. Let me just say for the record my fervent hope is it is the latter," Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend told a news briefing.
Earlier the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says it has "confirmed information" that so-called Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed.
Where is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Is the leader of so-called Islamic State dead? pic.twitter.com/FBZSmAOAFX
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) July 11, 2017
However, the Pentagon said it has no information to corroborate reports of Baghdadi's death.
The observatory said it had information from top IS group leaders.
"Top tier commanders from IS who are present in Deir Ezzor province have confirmed the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, emir of the Islamic State group, to the Observatory," director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
"We learned of it today but we do not know when he died or how."
There have been persistent rumours of Baghdadi's death in recent months, and Russia's military said in mid-June that it was seeking to verify whether it had killed the IS chief in an air strike in Syria in May.
Russia's army said Sukhoi warplanes carried out a ten-minute raid on 28 May at a location near the IS stronghold of Raqqa, where group leaders had gathered to plan a pullout from the area.
The US-led coalition fighting the jihadist group in Syria and Iraq said at the time it could not confirm whether the Russian strike had killed Baghdadi.
The 46-year-old Iraqi-born leader of IS has not been seen in public since making his only known public appearance as "caliph" in 2014 at the Grand Mosque of Al-Nuri in Mosul.
IS destroyed the highly symbolic site before Iraqi forces could reach it as they pushed the jihadist group from Mosul, where Iraq's government formally declared victory yesterday.
With a $25-million US bounty on his head, Baghdadi has kept a low profile and was rumoured to move regularly throughout IS-held territory in the area straddling Iraq and Syria.
His death, if confirmed, would be a new blow to the group which is also battling a US-backed coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters for control of its Syrian stronghold Raqqa.
