Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has exhorted followers across the world to wage attacks against the West and to keep fighting in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere

In an audio released on Thursday of what it said was its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on members under pressure in Syria and Iraq to "resist" their enemies. The Russian Defense Ministry said in June that there was a “high probability” that Baghdadi was killed in a Russian airstrike near the Syrian city of Raqqah, the capital of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate and its operations hub. On the day after ISIS bizarrely tried to claim responsibility for a failed attack that targeted U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis in Afghanistan, the terror organization is attempting to reassure followers that all is well with their leader. “Oh soldiers of the Caliphate, fan the flames of war on your enemies, take it to them and besiege them in every corner, and stand fast and courageous,” Baghdadi purportedly says in the audio released by the Islamic State group’s Al Furqan news channel. Advertisement

The militant leader’s last recorded message came in November, just weeks after Iraqi forces, supported by U.S. airstrikes, launched a campaign to recapture the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the largest to fall to Islamic State. “Oh soldiers of Islam in every location, increase blow after blow, and make the media centers of the infidels, from where they wage their intellectual wars, among the targets.”

Asked about the audio, Ryan Dillion, a spokesperson for US forces fighting the Islamic State group, told BBC, “Without verifiable evidence of his death, we have continued to assume that he is alive”.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant releases footage which apparently show its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urging his followers to expand their attacks against "crusaders and apostates".