ISIS has appointed a new leader after chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was left "clinically dead" in an airstrike, Iraqi sources have claimed.

The warlord is reported to have been targeted when he met with a host of other remaining ISIS leaders in June.

However, al-Baghdadi's death has been reported by Iraqi security sources numerous times in the past, with US authorities always unwilling to confirm it due to a lack of evidence.

A source told Iraq’s Alsumaria News yesterday that Iraqi warplanes crossed the border and blitzed the high-level summit.

They added: "Iraqi warplanes launched an airstrike inside the Syrian territories in June, targeting a meeting of Islamic State leaders, where the group’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was present."

According to the source, the airstrike left al-Baghdadi mortally wounded and incapable of assuming his duties, prompting the group’s leaders to nominate Abu Othman al-Tunisi to succeed him.

Al-Baghdadi was said to have been injured in a previous strike in February and intelligence agencies believe he was also badly hurt in a raid in 2015.

For most of the past 18 months, al-Baghdadi has been hiding out in the Euphrates river valley close to the Iraq/Syria border trying to keep one step ahead of forces from both nations.

But website Iraqi News had claimed that he’d been smuggled out of Iraq and was holed up in Africa, where he hoped to revive the fortunes of his regime.

It was reported in January he even fled Iraq in a TAXI after demanding his loyalists fight to their deaths.

Sameh Eid, an expert in the Jihadist group’s affairs in Egypt, said Baghdadi was likely to be in Africa after the senior members fled Iraq and Syria.

No firm reports about al-Baghdadi have been heard since September 2017, when he urged supporters to wage attacks against the West and keep fighting in Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

Al-Baghdadi emerged as leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the groups that later became ISIS, in 2010.

In October 2011, the US officially designated al-Baghdadi as a terrorist. It has offered a reward of up to $25m (£19.6m) for information leading to his capture or death.