ISIS Chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is alive: Iraqi Intelligence

ISIS Chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is alive: Iraqi Intelligence
TEHRAN - Spokesman for the Iraqi Defense Ministry General Yahya Rasoul said on Saturday that ISIL's Chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is still alive, adding that al-Baghdadi has hidden somewhere at Iraq-Syria border.

General Rasoul said that the Iraqi intelligence has found evidence proving that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is in a sleeper cell of the ISIL terrorists at Iraq-Syria border.

He further said that sleeper cells of the ISIL are still present in desert regions at Iraq-Syria borders, adding that based on intelligence al-Baghdadi is moving from a cell to another in the region.

General Rasoul added that al-Baghdadi has hidden in a region between the Iraqi border town of al-Qa'em in Anbar and the Syrian town of Albu Kamal near the Euphrates River. 

Media sources said on Thursday that they gained access to letters sent by ISIL ringleader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to other commanders of the terrorist group in Libya after his repeated failures in Syria and Iraq.

The Arabic edition of al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Thursday that al-Baghdadi's letters, some of them written last year and some of them in the past few weeks, indicated that the ISIL leader was after making up for his defeats in Syria and Iraq by calling on the terrorist groups' commanders and members to go to Libya.

It added that the letters written to 13 of al-Baghdadi's deputies and commanders in Libya stressed the need for them to use Southern Libya as a place for recruiting the members who have fled from the East in a bid to finally target Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria.