Exclusive: Islamic State leader Baghdadi almost certainly alive - Kurdish security official

[Doug the Dem]

Source: Reuters

July 17, 2017 / 3:22 AM / 2 hours ago

Sulaimania, IRAQ (Reuters) - A top Kurdish counter-terrorism official said on Monday he was 99 percent sure that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was alive and located south of the Syrian city of Raqqa, after reports that he had been killed.

"Baghdadi is definitely alive. He is not dead. We have information that he is alive. We believe 99 percent he is alive," Lahur Talabany told Reuters in an interview.

"Don't forget his roots go back to al Qaeda days in Iraq. He was hiding from security services. He knows what he is doing."

Iraqi security forces have ended three years of Islamic State rule in the Iraqi city of Mosul, and the group is under growing pressure in Raqqa - both strongholds in the militants' crumbling self-proclaimed caliphate.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-baghdadi-idUSKBN1A20JD

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I can't figure out the time stamp either.

[heaven05]

1. just trump and his jealousy

trying to outdo with lies, a true POTUS who did bring down Osama bin ladin. By spreading lies of the sort refuted by this report.....the boy-potus keeps proving he can't stand a true leader......that whole bannon crowd pales to insignificance when a true, faithful to american ideals POTUS, Barack Hussein Obama, is recognized and his family too... .

[nycbos]

2. How many times has he been dead now?

[Eugene]

3. If only Reuters could expend the extra 8 bytes of bandwidth to put "updated" in their timestamp.

It would save so much confusion to post "July 17, 2017 / 3:22 AM / updated 2 hours ago".

[mr_lebowski]

4. As time passed it would no longer be accurate though ...

If you used a 'X hours ago' nomenclature. Better would be to have "Created: Timestamp, Last Updated: Timestamp"

As a database administrator, I've put fields called "create_ts" and "lastmod_ts" in practically every one of the 1000's of tables I've created over the years, along with stamps for WHO made it and WHO updated it in most cases.

They're nearly universally-useful data points.