Wounded Daesh chief 'alive' in Syria, Iraqi official says

An Iraqi interior ministry official has said Daesh's leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is alive and being treated at a field hospital in Syria after being wounded in an air strike.

"We have irrefutable information and documents from sources within the terrorist organisation that Al Baghdadi is still alive and hiding" in Syria's northeastern Jazira region, intelligence and counterterrorism department head Abu Ali al Basri was quoted as saying in the government daily As-Sabah on Monday.

Daesh retains a significant presence in the desert plains of northeastern Syria's Hasakeh province despite having lost most of its cross-border "caliphate" which once also covered a third of neighbouring Iraq.

Basri said that Baghdadi was suffering from "injuries, diabetes and fractures to the body and legs that prevent him from walking without assistance."

The Daesh chief had been wounded in "air raids against IS [Daesh] strongholds in Iraq," he said.

List of wanted militants

Iraqi authorities last week published a list of "internationally wanted terrorist leaders" headed by the self-proclaimed Daesh "caliph," born in 1971, under the name Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali al Badri al Samarrai.

Last June, Russia said it had probably killed Baghdadi in a late May air raid near Raqqa in Syria, but later said it was still trying to verify his fate.

In September, a US military chief said the Daesh leader was still alive and probably hiding in eastern Syria's Euphrates Valley.