Iraqi Premier Adel Abdel Mahdi said Tuesday the ISIL group had been militarily weakened but not defeated as the recent deadly Sri Lanka bombings had shown.
An ISIL 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 ISIL 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.
“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 ISIL’s much-feared “caliphate” across swathes of Iraq and Syria.
After losing its last remaining territory in the Syrian town of Baghouz in March, “ISIL has not completely disappeared but suffered painful blows”, the Iraqi premier said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Mahdi cautioned that ISIL “will try to rebuild trust among its fighters, will try to launch further operations” like the Sri Lanka April 21 attacks which killed more than 250 people.
“ISIL was broken, but if little cells are left, it could reactivate and resurface and commit painful attacks,” he added, according to interpreted remarks.
Source: AFP
