Iraqi news channel Al Sumariya TV claimed local sources in Iraq's Nineveh province had confirmed that Baghdadi and other leaders in the Islamist group were wounded yesterday in the coalition bombing raid.
An earlier report had said Baghdadi had been injured in an air strike on a location 65 kilometres west of the Islamic State-held city of Mosul while travelling in a convoy with other senior IS figures.
Meals prepared for Baghdadi and three other Islamic State leaders were allegedly poisoned in Nineveh's Be'aaj district in Iraq, several Arabic-language and Iranian news sites reported.
Though an official confirmation is yet to come, a Guardian report had last week claimed that Baghdadi had received serious 'life-threatening' injuries during a US-led airstrike in March.
In a bid to lure wannabe jihadists, the Islamic State has come out with a bizarre 'holiday brochure' online offering travellers swimming, sunshine and beekeeping in war-torn Iraq.
Baghdadi, who had declared himself as Caliph, issued a statement titled 'farewell speech' which was distributed among ISIS' preachers and clerics on Tuesday, as Iraqi army tightened noose around the group's last remaining territory in Mosul, Al-Arabiya reported, quoting Iraqi TV network Alsumaria.
After a month-long buildup, the last urban stronghold of Islamic State in Iraq has for several days been almost completely surrounded by a 30,000-strong force.
Muslim groups and leaders from across the world, including those from the United States, have strongly condemned the barbarism unleashed by the Islamic State, also known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS, describing the extremist outfit's behaviour as "un-Islamic".
The advance of the Al-Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and its allies towards Baghdad appears to have been "stalled" but the "grave" situation in Iraq needs to be dealt with militarily as well as politically, a top UN official has said.
Driven from its self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria, Islamic State is down but not out. Where once they confronted armies, the extremist Islamist group's adherents have now staged hit-and-run raids and suicide attacks. In some cases, the group has claimed responsibility for atrocities, including the bombings of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed at least 253 people. Its involvement is not always proven, but even if the link is ideological rather than operational, Islamic State still poses a security threat in many countries.
'If policy-makers hold the lives of animals to be more significant than the welfare of a human populace, I can't believe that they're likely to do anything progressive for India.'
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