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A still photo from video posted on a militant website July 5, 2014, purports to show the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, delivering a sermon at a mosque in Iraq during his first public appearance.

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Last Updated Jul 11, 2017 1:42 PM EDT

LONDON -- A London-based monitoring group with a solid history of accurately reporting incidents from inside war-torn Syria said Tuesday that it had been able to confirm the death of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Russia said in June that there was a "high degree of probability" al-Baghdadi had been killed in a Russian airstrike at the end of May. Moscow firstmade the claim on June 16, saying it had evidence he was among a group of ISIS leaders targeted at a meeting just outside the terror group's de facto capital in Raqqa, Syria.

U.S. and Iraqi officials cast doubt on the claim then, however, saying they had no evidence to suggest al-Baghdadi was dead. There have been numerous erroneous reports of his demise since ISIS seized a vast swath of northern Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014.

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The Reuters news agency quoted U.S. military officials in Washington again on Tuesday as saying they had no reason yet to believe al-Baghdadi was dead.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition told CBS News in an emailed statement that, "we cannot confirm this report, but hope it is true. We strongly advise ISIS to implement a strong line of succession, it will be needed."

A U.S. intelligence official also told CBS News that the U.S. had not confirmed the report.

The director of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) told CBS News that a "1st tier and two 2nd tier ISIS commanders from Deir Ezzor" had confirmed al-Baghdadi's death.

SOHR director Ramy Abdel Rahman told CBS News by phone that the sources "could not say when Baghdadi died, or whether he succumbed to injuries he sustained in an attack."

ISIS has now lost the largest population center it controlled in Iraq, the city of Mosul, and is surrounded by U.S.-allied and Syrian forces in Raqqa. The size of the group's self-declared "Islamic caliphate" has shrunk around 60 percent over the last several years.

If confirmed, al-Baghdadi's death would be a huge symbolic blow to the Sunni Muslim extremist group, which many experts expect to convert in the coming months into a more traditional insurgency -- still hell-bent on carrying out deadly attacks as and where it can, but without holding significant territory in either Iraq or Syria.

Baghdadi hasn't been heard from since late 2016. The ISIS leader has only appeared once in video, speaking to supporters in an iconic mosque in the heart of Mosul that wasdestroyed by ISIS in Juneas Iraqi forces closed in. That appearance came in 2014.

The last time Baghdadi released an audio message was Nov. 3, 2016, when he released an statement urging followers to continue to fight for Mosul.

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Monitoring group says ISIS members confirm leader's death - CBS News

Dying is easy. Putting yourself in harms way to visually document a brutal conflict in the Middle East is hard.

That's the impression you get, at least, while looking through the work of Lewis & Clark grad Kainoa Little. The freelance photographer spent April and May in Mosul with Iraqi forces as they tried to recapture the city, three years after its capture by the Islamic State.

He returned with a striking collection of photographs depicting the brutality and violence he witnessed. But when he tried to find newspapers and wire services that would buy them, Little came up empty-handed. So he uploaded them to his website and posted a few on PetaPixel.

"The worst uncertainty for me as a freelancer in conflict isn't that I won't be able to pay my rent; it's that no one will see the story," Little said in the post. He noted that the soldiers and refugees he met "very rightly expected that I would tell their story."

The Iraqi Prime Minister declared victory over ISIS yesterday, effectively ending the recapture effort. Uncertainties surrounding the eventual rebuilding effort still remain.

Little is now based in Shoreline, WA. You can see more of his work on his website, or follow him on Instagram.

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Lewis & Clark Grad Uploads Harrowing Photos Of ISIS Conflict in Iraq - Willamette Week

Tony Blair and George W Bush deliver statements to the media on 7 September 2002 after the prime ministers arrival at the US presidential retreat, Camp David, Maryland, where they met to discuss possible military intervention in Iraq. Photograph: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

Your report (Blair was not straight on Iraq war Chilcot, 7 July) adds nothing to what we know about Tony Blair and the Iraq war but says something about the mindset of people like Sir John Chilcot, and should make us doubly wary about the appointment of another senior civil servant to head the Grenfell Tower inquiry. The inordinate amount of time taken by the inquiry and the absurd length of the final report amounted to an obstruction of justice and has meant that Chilcot himself is no stranger to self-justification.

When he reported to parliament in July 2016 the statement from Chilcot was widely viewed as damning. Translating mandarin into English, he concluded that Tony Blair lied to the British people about the dangers posed by Saddam Husseins Iraq and its possession of nuclear and chemical weapons and that he took the country into an illegal war at the behest of the US, to whom he had professed support.

Although continuing with his critical comments in the reported interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Chilcot adds that Tony Blair spoke emotional truth. People in Chilcots position may find it emotionally and professionally unacceptable to say that other servants of the state, particularly those in powerful positions like a prime minister, have actually lied. I translate emotional truth here to mean the lies Blair told, with evident determination, to get around an obstruction to his own interests. In ordinary language these are just plain, unadorned lies. Tony Booth Cambridge

You report that Sir John Chilcot, the chairman of the public inquiry into the Iraq war, considers that Tony Blair had been emotionally truthful in his account of events leading up to the war. He goes on to say that Blair is always and ever an advocate. He makes the most persuasive case he can. Not departing from the truth but persuasion is everything.

On 7 September 2002, Tony Blair met President Bush at Camp David. The Washington Post reported the next day that Blair said the threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability that threat is real. We need only to look at the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites to realise that. Bush made some remarks about an IAEA report showing that Iraq was only six months away from a nuclear bomb.

There was no report from the IAEA about Iraq on 7 September 2002. The IAEA statement saying that the Iraqis were six months away from a nuclear weapon came from an IAEA report in 1996 and referred to the situation in 1991.

Emotionally truthful? Not departing from the truth? It doesnt seem like that to me. The word lies seems more appropriate. Norman Dombey Brighton

Unfortunately, it is your headline quotation that is not straight. Laura Kuenssberg had tried to put words into Sir Johns mouth and his actual response, as quoted accurately in the body of the text, was: I think any prime minister ... has got to be straight with the nation and carry it with him I dont believe that that was the case in the Iraq instance.

At no point did Sir John say Blair was not straight on [the] Iraq war. Indeed, he said clearly that Blair had not departed from the truth. There are two elements in Sir Johns reply. In view of his statement regarding the veracity of Blairs account, the most likely and best interpretation of Sir Johns words is that Blair was straight, as any prime minister would have to be over such a serious matter, but that, in Sir Johns opinion, he failed to take the nation with him.

Clearly, the prime minister failed to carry some of the nation with him. One can only wonder where this story would be if weapons of mass destruction had been found, as was anticipated by virtually everyone at the time. It was an intelligence failure that led directly to war, not a casual desire by Blair to smear his reputation for ever. As for the bloody aftermath, that lies squarely on the shoulders of Paul Bremer, the man who deliberately collapsed the Iraqi state. Roy Boffy Sutton Coldfield

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Tony Blair: a pretty straight sort of guy on the Iraq war? - The Guardian

The heavily damaged al-Nuri mosque in Mosul, Iraq. Photograph: Felipe Dana/AP

It is widely accepted that Islamic States defeat in Mosul, declared this weekend, ends a battle but not a war, and that the groups thousands of jihadi supporters could turn in revenge to targeted suicide bombings in the west as well as in cities in Iraq and Syria. What has been less often predicted is the risk of mass violence from a different quarter. Iraqis themselves may slip back into fraternal conflict now that their temporary need to unite against Isis is almost over.

Three years of war against the Islamist extremists created a national sense of urgency which overcame regional, ethnic and sectarian disputes. But with Isis now on the back foot, and deprived of most of the territory it once held throughout western Iraq, old tensions could resume.

One of these deep-seated Iraqi problems has clearly worsened since Isis emerged to capture Mosul in 2014. In the early months of the struggle to prevent the group from moving on to seize Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish regional government, Kurdish resistance forces occupied vast areas of the Nineveh plain east of Mosul which had long been disputed between Arabs and Kurds. The same happened in the oil-rich provinceof Kirkuk.

Baghdad must also quickly find the resources to rebuild the shattered city and help its traumatised civilians

Under Iraqs post-Saddam constitution, the fate of these areas was supposed to be decided in a referendum which has been repeatedly postponed. New facts have now been created on the ground. Whereas up to 2014 it was Baghdad that controlled the disputed areas and had an incentive to delay any change, the Kurds are now the occupiers and in the dominant position.

The issue will only exacerbate already existing divisions over how Iraq is to share its oil revenues and the federal budget between the Kurdish region and the rest. Added to that will be the independence referendum the Kurds are holding in September.

The second major issue is the risk of violence between Arab Sunnis and Shias. In 2014 Isis was able to seize Mosul relatively easily because the citys largely Sunni population felt neglected by Baghdad. Some even felt that the new post-Saddam Iraqi army, largely made up of Shias, was behaving like an occupying power.

The challenge now is to ensure that a new local government is chosen for Mosul which takes Sunnis interests into full account and ends their sense of alienation. Baghdad must also quickly find the resources to rebuild the shattered city and help its traumatised civilians. Thousands were killed in the struggle to retake it, in which the US-led coalition like the Russian and Syrian air forces in Aleppo enjoyed total air supremacy and used massive bombs to eliminate snipers.

Repairing the damage will be a huge task. The governments record in other liberated cities is at best patchy. Falluja and Ramadi were both freed from Isis rule more than a year ago, yet visiting these cities this spring I could see huge swaths of ruined districts with little sign of reconstruction. The mayor of Falluja was still living in Erbil, where he had taken refuge from Isis. He made only occasional forays into the city he was meant to be running.

The good news is that most of Iraqs leaders recognise the challenges. The prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, has shown himself to be more sensitive and inclusive than his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki. Statesmanlike noises have also been coming from at least one of Iraqs other Shia powerbrokers. Earlier this year Moqtada al-Sadr told me in his Najaf home: Im afraid the defeat of Daesh [Isis] is only the start of a new phase. I am very proud of Iraqs diversity but my fear is that we may see a genocide of some ethnic or sectarian groups.

To counter the danger, he has been proposing a series of visits by Shia community leaders to Sunni areas and vice versa to start a dialogue on reconstruction. More cogently, he has publicly warned members of the militia force that he mobilised when Isis emerged that any abuse of Sunni civilians will be ruthlessly punished. He also promised to disband the force once the war ended.

The test of his sincerity comes now. Other militia leaders have been more vague about the future of the private armies, the so-called popular mobilisation units, which they sent into battle against Isis. They too will have to come clean either by disbanding their militias altogether or sending individual members to enlist in the regular army.

Restoring intercommunal trust is no easy task. It is barely a decade since Baghdad was torn apart by al-Qaida-inspired sectarian murders. The scars have yet to heal. Since then the arrival of hundreds of Iranian military advisers in the fight against Isis has launched a wave of anti-Iran hysteria among Iraqi Sunnis, even to the extent of claiming that Iraq is now run by Iran. Saudi Arabias virulent anti-Iranian policies only add fuel to the fire.

Many Sunnis have an unjustified feeling of victimhood now that the Shia majority is in political charge. But some Sunni leaders are willing to accept a new status for their communities and are working with al-Abadi. They should be encouraged. With Isis out of the picture, Iraqi Arabs need to go back to the values of not so long ago when Sunni or Shia identities were politically irrelevant.

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The battle for Mosul is won. But can Iraq survive? - The Guardian

From the ruins of Mosul, from the defeat of Islamic State, there is a chance to build a lasting peace not just for Iraq but for the wider Middle East. This is no naive and optimistic boast, but a realistic assessment of the opportunity on offer. And Britain is uniquely placed to help make it happen. Heres how we can go about it.

We need to realise, above all, that the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq and then the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) was fuelled by the disfranchisement of Sunni muslims, who felt that Shia muslims, under the leadership of Shia Iran, grew too dominant after the demise of (Sunni) Saddam Hussein, so upsetting the regional balance of power.

The vast majority of Sunnis reject Isil extremism, but they ask themselves this question: why should we send our young men to fight and die stamping out Isil, only to put ourselves under the boot of Iran and Syrian dictator...

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Britain can be Iraq's best and biggest ally as it strives for a peaceful future - Telegraph.co.uk