The Iraqi air force struck a convoy of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in western Anbar province close to the Syrian border on Sunday, a military statement said.

The fate of the militant leader, who has declared himself the leader of a Caliphate in areas it controls in Iraq and Syria, is still unknown, the statement said.

“Iraqi air forces have bombed the convoy of the terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi while he was heading to Karabla to attend a meeting with Daesh commanders,” the statement read, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.

In early 2015, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi told the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper that Baghdadi was wounded in an airstrike in Iraq’s northwestern town of al-Qa’im along the border with Syria

Abadi’s dubbed Baghdadi’s survival as “miraculous.”

Also, tribal sources in November last year told Al Arabiya News Channel that ISIS was “critically wounded” when a U.S.-led air strike targeted Qa’im.

ISIS remains in control of Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul after it waged a lighting offensive in June last year. Parts of Anbar are also under ISIS’s grip of power.

Coalition targets ISIS

In a related story, the United States and its allies staged 24 air strikes on ISIS in Syria and Iraq on Saturday, the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement on Sunday.

Seventeen of the attacks were in Iraq, targeting Islamic State near 10 cities and hitting tactical units, buildings, weapons, fighting positions and other assets, the task force said.

In Syria, seven strikes struck similar targets, as well as a crude oil collection point.

(Al Arabiya News)