Islamic State (IS) group chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is reported to have abandoned Mosul, leaving local commanders behind to lead the battle against Iraqi forces advancing in the city.
With Iraqi troops making steady progress in their assault to retake Mosul from the jihadists, a U.S. defence official said Baghdadi had fled to avoid being trapped inside. It was the latest sign that IS is feeling the pressure from twin U.S.-backed offensives that have seen it lose much of the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, the defence official said Baghdadi had left Mosul before Iraqi forces seized control of a key road at the beginning of this month, isolating the jihadists in the city.
“He was in Mosul at some point before the offensive... He left before we isolated Mosul and Tal Afar,” a town to the west, the official said.
“He probably gave broad strategic guidance and has left it to battlefield commanders.”
Baghdadi, who declared IS’s cross-border “caliphate” at a Mosul mosque in 2014, in an audio message in November urged supporters to make a stand in the city rather than “retreating in shame”.
More U.S. troops in Syria
Also, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Syria said on Thursday that the U.S. is deploying an additional 400 troops to help defeat the IS in Raqqa. “They are temporary forces,” U.S. Colonel John Dorrian told reporters in Baghdad, confirming a report in The New York Times , adding that the long-term authorised level of U.S. troops in Syria would remain at 500.
IS is facing simultaneous offensives in northern Syria by government forces, Turkish-backed rebels, and a U.S.-supported alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters.
