ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ‘has fled to remote African hide-out’ as terror group slowly crumbles

ISIS boss Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has fled to a remote hide-out in Africa and is the crumbling terror group’s last leader standing, it has been claimed.

Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi expert on the warped death cult, said all the founders of ISIS were now dead leaving al-Baghdadi cowering in the shadows.

Iraqi News claimed the terror leader has escaped from Iraq and is holed up in Africa where he hopes to revive the fortunes of his regime.

Sameh Eid, an expert in the Jihadist group’s affairs in Egypt, said Baghdadi was likely to be in Africa, after the group members fled Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, Najeh Ibrahim, former leader with Jamaa al-Islamiyah, said Baghdadi could be somewhere like northern Chad or the lawless border area between Algeria and Niger.

Expert Hisham al-Hashimi said al-Baghdadi is the only prominent ISIS leader left alive.

“Out of 43 main leaders, Baghdadi is the only one left,” he told The Guardian “Out of 79 senior leaders there are only 10 left.

He added: “The mid-level commanders (124) constantly change positions and posts due to deaths of other members.

“Every six months their roles change, they either get killed or replaced.”

Intelligence agencies in Iraq and Europe believe that for most of the past 18 months, Baghdadi was based in a village south of Baaj in northern Iraq.

The depraved terrorist has also travelled between Abu Kamal, on the Iraq-Syria border, and Shirkat, south of Mosul.

Three intelligence agencies have confirmed that Baghdadi was seriously wounded in an airstrike near Shirkat in early 2015.

Hashimi said: “ISIS has resorted to being a shadow government.

“They still control small parts of Anbar and Euphrates river but they are sleeper cells. There is no leadership structure, it has dissolved.

“They do not hold meetings any more – and if they do it is never in the same place twice.

“They don’t even pass oral messages to each other anymore. They use Signal and Telegram (encrypted apps) to communicate.

“They’ve cut back the men by 50%. The main budget cannot be touched any more. Leadership no longer matters.”

And Hashimi said that many of the brainwashed jihadi fighters feel “betrayed” after being abandoned by the group’s hierarchy.

He said: “I’ve met with (foreign fighter) Abu Hamza al-Belgiki, who feels betrayed, as do all of them.

“They had been instructed to fight for Mosul till their deaths.

“When the battles intensified in the city the senior leaders and those close to Baghdadi all fled, leaving these fighters behind.

“They feel fooled. They have been fooled.”

A US military assessment is that he is probably hiding in the Euphrates river valley, along the border with Syria.

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