Who Was Islamic State Leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi?
- Baghdadi built self-declared caliphate on fear, mass murder
- Feared jihadi died ‘like a dog’ and a ‘coward,’ Trump says
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Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a U.S. military operation in northern Syria, led a terrorist group that slaughtered thousands during a fearsome rise to power stopped only after an international military coalition was formed to bring it down.
Baghdadi, who transformed himself from a little-known teacher of Koranic recitation into the self-proclaimed ruler of an entity that covered swaths of Syria and Iraq, was killed along with a number of his followers, U.S. President Donald Trump said. His body was mutilated after he detonated a suicide vest while fleeing into a dead-end tunnel.