Iraqi Premier Adel Abdel Mahdi said Tuesday the Islamic State group had been militarily weakened but not defeated as the recent deadly Sri Lanka bombings had shown.
An ISIS propaganda video released Monday with a purported appearance by the jihadist group’s elusive supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi showed him in what appeared to be a “very simple and isolated” location, Mahdi said on a visit to Berlin.
“One and a half years ago Daesh controlled large areas in Iraq and Syria, and now Baghdadi appears in an isolated, unknown location,” he said about the world’s most wanted man, using another name for IS.
“He did not seem to be among his followers like the first time in Mosul”, he said, referring to a 2014 video in which Baghdadi announced the birth of IS’s much-feared “caliphate” across swathes of Iraq and Syria.