The senior U.S. commander in Iraq on Tuesday said he did not "have a clue," if ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was dead, despite reports a group in Syria said it had "confirmed information" he had been killed.
"I don't have a clue – simple as that," Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend said, per The Hill. "So, don't know if he's alive, don't know if he's dead. I don't know where he's alive. I don't know where his dead body is. I don't have a clue."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria, tweeted Tuesday that Baghdadi had been killed. But Baghdadi's death has been rumored numerous times in the past.
"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," the monitor's director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Russia last month said it was looking into whether one of its airstrikes killed Baghdadi, but Townsend said Tuesday he had received intel that that was not the case.
"But I don't know," he said, per The Hill. "Since then, we've heard all kinds of reporting that he's alive, that he's dead. Quite honestly, don't know."
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