A Syrian war monitor has "confirmed information" that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, leader of the so-called Islamic state (Daesh), is dead, according to Reuters.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a record of credible reporting on the Syrian crisis, said that top Daesh officers have confirmed their leader has been killed.
US and Iraqi officials said that they could not verify the news, neither could Reuters.
Last month, Russia's Defense Ministry declared that it might have killed Al-Baghdadi in an air strike, but Iraqi officials are skeptical.
The report comes days after the Iraqi army defeated the last remnants of Daesh in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where the terrorist organization's leader first declared his caliphate.
"(We have) confirmed information from leaders, including one of the first rank who is Syrian, in the Islamic State in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Zor," the director of the Observatory, a British-based war monitoring group, told Reuters.
Daesh sources informed activists working with the director that Al-Baghdadi had died, without mentioning when, where nor how, adding that Al-Baghdadi had been present in Syria's Deir al-Zor province during the past three months.
The US-led coalition fighting Daesh in Syria and Iraq, as well as Iraqi and Kurdish officials, said that they have no information to confirm the news.
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In June, Russia said that it might have killed the Daesh chief when an air strike hit a gathering of Daesh commanders on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa.
Al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law from Mosul's iconic 850-year-old Grand al-Nuri Mosque in 2014.
Iraq's Prime Minister recently announced the liberation of Mosul from the terrorist organization, shortly after the Iraqi military took back control of the Grand al-Nuri Mosque.