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Cairo: Islamic State’s media network yesterday issued an audio message purporting to come from its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi saying operations were taking place daily and urging freedom for women jailed in Iraq and Syria over their alleged links to the group.
“Daily operations are underway on different fronts,” he said in the 30-minute tape published by the Al Furqan network, in what would be his first message since April. He cited several regions such as Mali and the Levant but gave no dates. He called on supporters to free women living in camps in Iraq and Syria following the group’s defeat.
He also said the US and its proxies had been defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the US had been “dragged” into Mali and Niger. Militants loyal to Adnan Abu Waleed Al Sahrawi, the leader of IS in the Greater Sahara, operate along Mali’s border with Burkina Faso and Niger. In 2017, they killed four members of US special forces and four Nigerien soldiers in an ambush near the village of Tongo Tongo.
Before IS published a video message of Baghdadi in April, there had been conflicting reports over whether he was alive.
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