(FOX NEWS) The secretive leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is believed to be holed up in the terror group’s hub of Mosul, as Iraqi and U.S. forces close in this week ahead of what could be a climactic fight.
Senior Kurdish official Hoshiyar Zebari said his forces had “solid” intelligence al-Baghdadi was somewhere in the Iraqi city of more than a million people and up to 6,000 ISIS fighters. The ISIS leader is likely with the group’s bomb maker Fawzi Ali Nouimeh, Kurdish officials told Reuters.
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, fell to ISIS in the summer of 2014 as the militants swept over much of the country’s north and central areas. Weeks later, al-Baghdadi announced the formation of a self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.
