e-News® | The NEWS Company.. : The shadowy leader of the Islamic State militant group surfaced in a new audio tape on Thursday, days after he was reported injured or killed in a coalition airstrike in northern Iraq. It also marks the first time he has spoken since the U.S. military began targeting the group in Iraq and Syria in August.
In his message, posted on Archive.org and YouTube — where it was later removed because it “violated YouTube’s Terms of Service” — Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi vows to fight the “crusader campaign” to the bitter end. (Read an ISIS-supplied English translation of the tape, here; the group has many English-speaking fighters.)
https://soundcloud.com/mashable/al-baghdadi-audio-tape
“God has ordered us to fight,” he says in the 17-minute recording. “For that reason, the soldiers of the Islamic State are fighting … they will never leave fighting, even if only one soldier remains. They will never leave fighting, because they reject humiliation.”
The voice on the tape seems authentic, according to The Associated Press, and appears to match that in previous recordings released by ISIS.
Self-styled caliph al-Baghdadi calls on Muslims to wage holy war everywhere, and to attack and kill “apostates” in Saudi Arabia and Yemen specifically. An earlier audio recording from al-Baghdadi is believed to have inspired militants in Algeria to kill and behead a French national.
The ISIS leader also announced in his message that his group has expanded to Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Algeria, and that competing jihadi groups active in those countries were nullified.
“O soldiers of the Islamic State,” al-Baghdadi says to his fighters in the recording. “Erupt volcanoes of jihad everywhere. Light the earth with fire upon all the [non-believers], their soldiers and supporters.”
An Iraqi Interior Ministry intelligence official told the AP earlier this week that an Iraqi airstrike on Saturday had wounded al-Baghdadi during a meeting in the town of Qaim, near the Syrian border in Iraq’s western Anbar province. The official cited informants within the militant group. The most recent event cited in Thursday’s recording is U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to send 1,500 more troops to Iraq, suggesting the tape was recorded in the last week. U.S. officials announced that decision last Friday.
