BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON — U.S. airstrikes destroyed an Islamic State convoy near the Iraqi city of Mosul but U.S. officials said on Saturday it was unclear whether the group’s top commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been in any of the 10 targeted vehicles.
Col. Patrick Ryder, a Central Command spokesman, said the U.S. military had reason to believe that the convoy was carrying leaders of Islamic State, an al-Qaida offshoot which controls large chunks of Iraq and Syria.
The convoy consisted of 10 Islamic State armed trucks.
“I can confirm that coalition aircraft did conduct a series of airstrikes yesterday evening in Iraq against what was assessed to be a gathering of ISIL leaders near Mosul,” said Ryder, using another name for Islamic State.
“We cannot confirm if ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was among those present.”
Islamic State had been changing its strategy since the airstrikes began, switching to lower profile vehicles to avoid being targeted, according to residents of towns the group holds.
A Mosul morgue official said 50 bodies of Islamic State militants were brought to the facility after the airstrike.
Mosul, northern Iraq’s biggest city, was overrun on June 10 in an offensive that saw vast parts of Iraq’s Sunni regions fall to the Islamic State and allied groups.
A month later a video posted online purported to show the reclusive Baghdadi preaching at Mosul’s grand mosque.
Earlier on Saturday, Al-Hadath television channel said U.S.-led airstrikes targeted a gathering of Islamic State leaders in a town near the Syrian border, possibly including Baghdadi.
Iraqi security officials were not immediately available for comment on the report from the station, part of Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television, but two witnesses told Reuters an airstrike targeted a house where senior Islamic State officers were meeting, near the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim.
Al-Hadath said dozens of people were killed and wounded in the strike in al-Qaim, and that Baghdadi’s fate was unclear.
Mahmoud Khalaf, a member of Anbar’s Provincial Council, also said there were airstrikes in al-Qaim. He gave no details.
The U.S.-led coalition carried out airstrikes near al-Qaim overnight, destroying an Islamic State armored vehicle and two checkpoints run by the group, Ryder said.
Bombings in Iraq
The hardline Sunni Islamic State’s drive to form a caliphate has helped return sectarian violence in Iraq to the dark days of 2006-2007, the peak of its civil war.
It has also created a cross-border sanctuary for Arab militants, as well as foreign fighters whose passports could allow them to evade detection in Western airports.
On Saturday night a car bomb killed eight people in Baghdad’s mostly Shiite Sadr City, police and hospital sources said, bringing to 28 the day’s toll from bombs in the Iraqi capital and the western city of Ramadi.
An attack by a suicide bomber on a checkpoint in Ramadi in Anbar killed five soldiers. “Before the explosion, the checkpoint was targeted with several mortar rounds. Then the suicide humvee bomber attacked it,” said a police official.
There was no claim of responsibility for the bombings, but they resembled operations carried out by Islamist militants.
In the town of Baquba, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, a gunman killed a Shiite militiaman, and a car bomb targeting a police officer killed his 10-year-old son, security sources said.
More US troops coming to Iraq
Western and Iraqi officials say airstrikes are not enough to defeat the Sunni insurgents and Iraq must improve the performance of its security forces to eliminate the threat.
President Barack Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 more troops to Iraq, roughly doubling the number of U.S. forces on the ground, to advise and retrain Iraqis.
The Iraqi prime minister’s media office said the additional U.S. trainers were welcome but the move, five months after Islamic State seized much of northern Iraq, was belated, state television reported.
The United States spent $25 billion on the Iraqi military during the U.S. occupation that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 and triggered an insurgency that included al Qaeda.
Washington wants Iraq’s Shiite-led government to revive an alliance with Sunni tribesmen in Anbar province which helped U.S. Marines defeat al-Qaida.
Such an alliance would face a more formidable enemy in Islamic State, which has more firepower and funding, and it may not be possible because of mistrust between Sunni tribes of Anbar and the Baghdad government.
Trouble grows in Libya
Libyan state security guards have started a protest at the 120,000 barrel per day Hariga oil port in the east, halting all oil exports from the terminal, a Libyan oil official said on Saturday.
The closure only adds to the growing chaos in Libya, whose internationally recognized government has been driven out of the capital by an alliance led by forces from the city of Misrata, which has installed a rival government and parliament.
In the main eastern city of Benghazi, five pro-government soldiers were killed and 28 wounded on Saturday while fighting Islamists, lifting the death toll from three weeks of clashes to 300, medics said.
The protesters at Hariga were part of a state security oil force that has gone on strike over pay several times this year.
“There is a sit-in from security guards who say they have not been paid,” said the official. “We are trying to solve the issue.”
A tanker had been waiting for three days to lift oil from Hariga, located in Tobruk, but the guards did not allow it to do so, the official said. The port was only open for fuel imports and the exports of refinery products, which are marginal, he added.