The enclave Baghdadi left behind finally fell over the weekend, after six weeks of gruelling battles and a seemingly never-ending departure of diehards who staggered from bunkers, rubble and tunnels in the ruins.
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The best guess of those who have hunted him and known him personally is that he has crossed the border into Iraq’s Anbar province, where the earliest incarnations of Isis gained momentum. Outside his immediate circle and the men who tried to kill him, very few knew he was there and even fewer know where he has gone since. “We don’t know about his condition, but we do know there was an attempt to kill him.”Īccording to regional and foreign intelligence officers, Baghdadi fled from Baghuz to the Syrian desert around 7 January. “We are certain about this,” one European intelligence source said. But according to three intelligence agencies and two sources with detailed knowledge, it was the place where foreign fighters close to Baghdadi’s inner circle nearly succeeded in killing the leader.Īccounts of intelligence officers and people in Baghuz who spoke to the Guardian say Baghdadi and his guards were forced to flee when several men inside the small home opened fire. The small town would soon be known around the world as the place where Isis fought and lost its final battle, where the vainglory of the “caliphate” finally crumpled in defeat. Inside the walls of the small home, Baghdadi, ailing, angry and paranoid, would face the biggest challenge yet to his authority. The most diehard Isis members were preparing for what increasingly looked like being their last stand, a long and ignominious way from where it all began when its fighters swept into towns and cities across Iraq and Syria, capturing all before them and rendering the border between the two countries little more than a line in the dirt.īaghuz, barely a speck on a bank of the Euphrates, was about to be etched into infamy.
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Several villages away, Kurdish forces were taking positions among the fresh rubble of still raging battles, readying for a final assault on the last holdout, a place that until very recently few could find on a map. Photograph: Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty ImagesĪbove the small town of Baghuz, where the terrorist group’s leader and his entourage were holed up, two US drones circled, searching for targets below. Alleged Isis fighters captured near the frontline Syrian village of Baghuz.