The Ministry of Defence is now checking the information about Al-Baghdadi's liquidation, but we know for sure that more than 300 terrorists belonging to top ISIS leadership were destroyed. Members of the group's War Council, the field commanders and their bodyguards died in May, as a result of the air strike by Russian pilots on the command post in Raqqa. But today we received data that the insurgents moved their command post from the besieged Raqqa to Mayadin, in the Deir ez-Zor province. Reporting from Syria, our war correspondent, Yevgeny Poddubny.
The Russian military may have liquidated the leader of the terrorist group ISIS. At the end of May, Russian Aerospace Forces' planes conducted a bomb strike against a building, which is located in Raqqa's southern outskirts in Syria, at the time when the so-called pseudo-Caliphate military council was being held there.
According to the Russian Defense Department, at this time the most wanted terrorist in the world could have been there at the time, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. Two planes, Su-34 and Su-35 struck a blow against terrorist headquarters at night on May 28. We have footage from a Russian drone. As a result, high-ranking commanders of the pseudo-Caliphate were destroyed, 30 middle-ranking commanders, and almost a battalion of rank-and-file fighters.
So far, there are only indirect signs that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was either killed or seriously wounded. After the Russian strike, the terrorist leader hasn't appeared in public once, there wasn't even a video message in honor of the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. Earlier, Baghdadi did not miss such opportunities to raise the terrorist group's morale. It is well known that at the meeting of ISIS's so-called military council, the leaders discussed militants' retreat from Raqqa along the southern corridor, towards Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor.
Kurdish troops, which are storming Raqqa, left the southern corridor to the terrorists. But, despite this, and in Syria's center, the defense of ISIS fighters isn't able to withstand the government forces' pressure. Arak settlement. Even the day before militants of the so-called Islamic State were here. The village is located on the Palmyra — Deir ez-Zor highway, and earlier both the heights around and the settlement itself, it seems, were a single line of defense for the militants of the pseudo-Caliphate. Now the Syrian Army offensive continues further.
On the way of the units who are fighting with the so-called Islamic State is the city of Al-Sukhna, further is Deir ez-Zor. The rebels retreated from Arak. The village was used by the terrorists as a resting place, a temporary ISIS control center was located here. After the de-escalation zones began to operate in Syria, Damascus was able to transfer reserves from Idlib and from the capital region to organize offensives against the pseudo-Caliphate militants. Syrian army's success is most of all awaited in Deir ez-Zor, where nearly 80,000 civilians are held hostage by the terrorists.
