ISIS has limited the role of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and sent a 12-member leadership council to the Syrian territories under the name of “negotiating committee” to practically lead the terrorist organization, informed Syrian sources said according to aawsat.com.

“Lately, Baghdadi has only been ISIS’ image, while the actual leadership of the organization in Syria and Iraq is in the hands of a 12-member council that plans and orders everything related to the group,” the founder of the Euphrates Post, Ahmad al-Ramadan, told Asharq Al-Awsat on Sunday.

Ramadan denied reports that Baghdadi had been killed in an air strike in Syria, asserting that the leader of ISIS “initially lives in Iraq.”

The founder of the Euphrates Post also said that the 12-member council has lately moved to Syria but issues decisions implementable in Syria and Iraq.

The latest development comes at a time when ISIS faces in its stronghold in Raqqa an attack from three fronts, led by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which already infiltrated from the east and west of the city and has lately opened a new front against the organization by attacking its linked Division 17 base in the north.

Meanwhile, a video released on the Internet showed on Sunday Syrian regime helicopters dropping barrel bombs on the city of Daraa and a Palestinian refugee camp in the southwest of the city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 170 missiles and barrel bombs had targeted Daraa on Sunday.

Currently, ISIS faces four battles in Syria, where the SDF and coalition forces attack the terrorist organization’s stronghold in Raqqa, while the Syrian regime and its allied militias face the group at three other fronts, in the countryside of Palmyra, the countryside of Damascus and in the eastern desert in the countryside of eastern Hama.

The Trump administration has been holding secret talks with Russia to try to set up a de-escalation zone in southwest Syria, where Syrian government forces and rebels would be separated in hopes of ending hostilities in the region, officials familiar with the talks said. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal.

At least two meetings have taken place so far, the last of which took place about two weeks ago in Jordan, where Jordanian officials also took part.  The third meeting, which was scheduled for this week, had to be postponed because of the mismatch of the participants’ working schedules. The new terms of this round of consultations have not yet been established, the source says.

On the American side, the negotiations are conducted by the US President’s special representative on issues of interaction with other countries in the fight against the terrorist group Islamic State Brett McGurk and Syrian special envoy for Iraq Michael Ratney.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans are counting on agreeing with Russia ways to defeat ISIS and the means necessary for this.

If the talks on the de-escalation zones in the south-west of Syria are successful, the parties are ready to continue the dialogue aiming to establish such zones in other parts of the Arab Republic, the sources of the agency note.

Earlier it was reported that Syrian media reported of massive strike on ISIS positions, killing more than 70 militants. It is reported that air and artillery strikes were carried out against the headquarters of the ISIS.

A self-proclaimed commander of Albanians fighting with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, notorious at home in Kosovo for a video showing him beheading a man, has been killed, police and his family said on Thursday.

Lavdrim Muhaxheri died in the Middle East, but it was not clear in which country or when, they told Reuters.

A video posted on the Internet in 2014 showed Muhaxheri beheading a young man in Iraq accused by IS of spying for the Iraqi government. Another video showed him killing another person with a rocket-propelled grenade.

A police official, who declined to be named, told Reuters that he had been killed, but gave no other details.

Confirming his death, an uncle of Muhaxheri asked a Reuters reporter: “Is everyone happy now?”

Around 300 Kosovars have gone to fight with Islamic State and more than 50 have been killed, Kosovo officials say. About 120 more are estimated to have left from Albania itself and about 100 from Macedonia’s Albanian minority.

Kosovo has not seen any militant attacks on its home turf, but at least 200 people have been detained or investigated for alleged Islamic State-related offences

Most of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority are nominally Muslim but overwhelmingly secular. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 with the backing of the West.

In 2015, it adopted a law introducing jail sentences of up to 15 years for anyone found guilty of fighting in wars abroad.

The battle to recapture Islamic State’s defacto capital Raqqa in Syria is officially under way and Australian air crews are among the coalition personnel in the skies conducting strike operations, like reported by sbs.com.au.

US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces began their assault on Monday.

US Lieutenant General Steve Townsend predicts the fight for Raqqa will be long and difficult, but the offensive would deliver a decisive blow to the idea of IS as a physical caliphate.

“It’s hard to convince new recruits that IS is a winning cause when they just lost their twin capitals in both Iraq and Syria,” he said in a statement.

The US-led coalition has said 3000-4000 IS fighters are thought to be holed up in Raqqa city, where they have erected defences against the anticipated assault.

The city is about 90km from the border with Turkey.

IS captured the city from rebel groups in 2014 and has used it as an operations base to plan attacks in the west.

A spokesman for the Australian Defence Department confirmed the RAAF air task group, which includes six F/A-18 Hornets, is conducting operations in eastern Syria, including near Raqqa.

“Importantly, operations are conducted according to international humanitarian law and all precautions are taken to avoid civilian casualties,” he said.

Australian defence personnel are also continuing with efforts to combat IS in western Mosul, Iraq, which is close to being liberated.

Australia has 780 defence personnel in Iraq and Syria, carrying out air strikes, special operations, and training Iraqi soldiers and police.

Militant fighters of the Islamic State (ISIS) have killed more than 160 people in one day last week in a bid to prevent them from escaping western Mosul, the United Nations reported on Tuesday, like reported by aranews.net.

The attack on Iraqi civilians stranded in the ISIS-held Western Mosul comes amidst a heavy military pressure on the radical group from the US-led coalition and Iraqi forces.

“The brutality of Daesh [ISIS] and other terrorist groups seemingly knows no bounds,” said Zeid bin Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN’s human rights chief.

“Bodies of murdered Iraqi men, women and children still lay on the streets of the al-Shira neighbourhood of western Mosul, after at least 163 people were shot and killed by Daesh to prevent them from fleeing,” the UN official said.

Local sources told ARA News that the mass killings took place on 1 June.

ISIS has been using civilians as human shields in Western Mosul, in an attempt to impede the US-backed Iraqi troops’ progress.

Iraqi forces recaptured eastern Mosul in January, and launched a new push to retake the remaining districts of Iraq’s second largest city.

Over 200,000 civilians remain trapped in ISIS-held parts of Mosul.

According to the United Nations, the population in ISIS-held enclave live in harrowing conditions, “running low on food, water and medicine, and with limited access to hospitals.”

Islamic State has blown up two bridges on the international highway in west of Anbar province, tribal forces declared, like reported by iraqinews.com.

“IS fighters blown up two pivotal bridges on the international highway, east of al-Waleed crossing on the borders between Iraq and Syria,”Shaker al-Rishawi, a senior commander of the Tribal Mobilization forces in Anbar, told AlSumaria News on Tuesday.

“The blast was carried out using amounts of explosives which made the bridges fall,” Rishawi said.

On Monday, the international coalition led by the U.S. foiled a suicide attack by IS militants who were using two booby-trapped vehicles at the border crossing.

Violence in the country has surged further with the emergence of Islamic State Sunni extremist militants who proclaimed an “Islamic Caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in 2014.

IS still holds three towns in western Anbar close to the borders with Syria, in addition to a few areas in Salahuddin, Diyala and Kirkuk. It is believed that the group has begun escalating attacks outside the city of Mosul, where the group has been losing ground and personnel since October.

Fighter jets from the Iraqi army and the international coalition have also regularly pounded IS locations in the province. The Iraqi government is expected to aim at those strongholds once the Mosul battle is concluded.

The director of the districts and towns of Kirkuk province police department, Sarhad Qader, told Asharq Al-Awsat on Sunday that armed groups from ISIS and al-Qaeda have held meetings to establish a new organization in Iraq, like reported by aawsat.com.

“Armed fighters from ISIS, al-Qaeda and some terrorist organizations operating in al-Huweija and other ISIS-controlled areas in the Hamreen Mountains and Diyala province, are currently working to establish a new terrorist organization,” Qader said.

He believed Arab and foreign militants will be part of the new group.

“Extensive meetings were being held among the militants of both organizations to set the stage for (the establishment of) this new group,” he added.

The latest development comes as ISIS registered on Sunday more losses in Iraq’s city of Mosul and its west.

Member of Security and Defense Committee of Nineveh Council Hashim al-Brifkani told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the remaining areas of Mosul which are under ISIS control are different geographically and in terms of infrastructure.

“Advancement is slow in those areas. But, despite all the difficulties, Iraqi security forces still have 3 kilometers to fully win the Mosul battle.”

Al-Brifkani also warned that one missile dropped in those neighborhoods would be able to destroy at least 10 houses because buildings there are very old and abut each other. “There are more than 100,000 civilians trapped by ISIS armed militants in those neighborhoods,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) announced on Sunday that they have liberated the strategic al-Baaj district and more than 10 towns near the Syrian border.

Therefore, after recuperating al-Baaj, ISIS is only left with the Telafar district in west Mosul.

According to Iraqi security forces, the Iranian-backed PMF has been besieging in Telafar hundreds of ISIS’ Arab, foreign and Iraqi leaders and militants for the past seven months.

Government forces and allied fighters on Sunday captured the last Islamic State stronghold in the northern province of Aleppo, a monitoring group reported according to chinadaily.com.cn.

The Syrian Army and fighters of Hezbollah entered the town of Maskanah, the last IS stronghold in Aleppo province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Located in the southeastern countryside of Aleppo, capturing Maskanah is the latest in a string of successful operations the army and its allies to end the presence of IS in Aleppo.

The observatory, which says it relies on a network of activists on the ground, said the army has been combing the town since early on Sunday in search of explosives and roadside bombs.

It added that the IS fighters and their families withdrew form the town before the army could place a full siege on it, following cutting the road between the town and northern province of Raqqa.

The wide-scale military offensive in the countryside of Aleppo was unleashed on Jan 17, after government forces took back control over the entire city of Aleppo.

Now, the army is also active in the Syrian desert against IS, capturing large swaths of territories from the terrorist group.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the situation in the nation is witnessing big improvements, largely due to the retreat of terrorist groups. The situation on the ground has become much better from a military perspective, Assad said in an interview published by state news agency SANA on Saturday.

The president’s remarks came as the IS group is losing ground on several fronts, mainly in the desert in central Syria, the countryside of Aleppo province, and in Raqqa province.

He also mentioned the retreat of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

An RAF Reaper drone interrupted a public execution by the Islamic State group after opening fire on the militants and driving them off, the Ministry of Defence has said, like reported by telegraph.co.uk.

The remote-controlled aircraft disrupted the display in a Syrian town by killing a sentry with a Hellfire missile.

Details of the incident on May 9 were revealed on Tuesday by the MoD.

The Reaper was flying an armed reconnaissance mission when it spotted a group of fighters from Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil), also known as Daesh, in a main street in the town of Abu Kamal.

A statement from the MoD said: “When a van then unloaded two shackled prisoners in front of the crowd, it became clear that Daesh were organising a public execution.

“Given the large number of civilians present, the Reaper’s crew could not target directly the Daesh fighters about to carry out the murders.”

The Reaper pilots, who are believed to have been flying the aircraft by satellite link from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, spotted two Isil fighters posted as sentries on a nearby roof.

The statement said: “A Hellfire missile was fired immediately, and scored a direct hit which not only killed one of the sentries but also brought the execution to an immediate halt, as the Daesh fighters fled the scene, and the crowd of civilians dispersed.”