Iraqi official: Isis leader 'injured in airstrike near Mosul'

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has called for attacks in Saudi Arabia, and said his Caliphate was expanding across the Arab world and called for "volcanoes of jihad" across the globe in a speech purported to be in his name.

Baghdadi also said that a US-led military campaign against his group in Syria and Iraq was failing. ITV News cannot independently verify the speech or its content.

There had been reports that Baghdadi had been injured or killed in a US airstrike over the weekend.

The United States government has no information that indicates the commander of the so-called Islamic State was wounded near the Iraqi city of Mosul in a recent air strike, officials have said.

Speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, officials were asked about an account on Twitter that said Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been wounded in the strikes. One official said that "nothing has changed" since Saturday, when the U.S. military said it was unclear if Baghdadi was present at the time of the strikes.

However, state media in Iraq, citing senior Iraqi government officials, has reported that Baghdadi was in the convoy.

Iraqi state television is now quoting a senior Iraqi official confirming that Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been injured in an airstrike near Mosul, ITV News understands.

Yesterday US officials said that airstrikes had destroyed a moving, 10-vehicle Islamic State convoy near Mosul, but said it was unclear whether al-Baghdadi was present at the time.

An army colonel and a witness have said Iraqi military forces reached the centre of the northern city of Baiji on Sunday to try to break an Islamic State siege of the country's biggest refinery nearby, triggering fierce clashes with the militants.

Islamic State Sunni insurgents seized Baiji city in June during a lightning advance through northern Iraq. Since then, they have surrounded the refinery and halted its production while a detachment of government troops has held out for months under siege inside it.

The colonel said Iraqi troops entered Baiji, a city of about 200,000 people, from the south and west and took over the al-Tamim neighbourhood and city centre.

US officials have said that air strikes destroyed a moving, 10-vehicle Islamic State convoy near the Iraqi city of Mosulm but added it was unclear whether the group's top commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was present at the time.

A spokesman at the US military's Central Command, said the US military had reason to believe that the convoy was the product of a gathering of Islamic State leaders.

The convoy was made up of 10 Islamic State armed trucks.

A US official has said that coalition air strikes have targeted a gathering of Islamic State leaders near Mosul in Iraq, destroying a vehicle convoy.

The official was not able to confirm reports that the IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been injured.