LONDON (Reuters) – Britain said yesterday it was investigating reports that a man believed to be a British national suspected of carrying out beheadings in videos released by Islamic State (IS) had been wounded in a US-led air strike last week.
The man, dubbed “Jihadi John” by the British media, was believed to have been injured in an air attack on a summit of IS leaders in an Iraqi town close to the Syrian border last Saturday, Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.
The group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was also said to have been wounded in the attack, the paper added.
“We are aware of reports,” a British Foreign Office spokeswoman said. “We cannot confirm these reports.”
A speech purporting to be by Baghdadi was released on Thursday following contradictory accounts out of Iraq that he had been wounded last Friday in US air strikes.
