Iraqi MP:

Daesh Leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi under US Protection

TEHRAN (defapress) – An Iraqi lawmaker said the leader of the Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is currently protected by US forces in the Arab country’s western province of Anbar.

News ID: 75873

Date: 27 February 2019 - 13:52

Baghdadi has chosen the province’s western desert areas as a safe haven for himself, Hassan Salem said, according to the Arabic-language El-Nashra news website.

The US military’s Ayn al-Asad Airbase provides all means to support al-Baghdadi’s movements between Iraq and Syria, he stated.

The Iraqi parliamentarian went on to say that the Daesh leader is under full protection of American troops in Anbar.

Daesh militants made swift advances in much of northern and western Iraq over the summer of 2014, after capturing large swaths of northern Syria.

However, a combination of concentrated attacks by the Iraqi military and the volunteer forces, who rushed to take arms after top Iraqi cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling for the fight against the militants, blunted the edge of Daesh offensive and later forced them to withdraw from the territories they had occupied.

In November 2017, the self-proclaimed caliphate of Daesh collapsed after Syrian and Iraqi armed forces and their allies managed to recapture the terror group’s last strongholds in the two Arab countries.

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