lucy is in our london bureau. help us to understand this. there s a lot of skepticism in part because al baghdadi has not been heard from in quite a long time. there s been no confirmation at this stage neither from the pentagon, the u.s.-led coalition tweeting just a few moments ago, coalition cannot confirm death of baghdadi. no definitive proof. welcome that day. even sergey lavrov said he can t confirm the death of the isis leader. the only information we have is coming from the russia defense. they say on may 28 300 fighters gathered to plan their escape from raqqah, a city currently under assault by the u.s. and its allies. russia drones dispatched a group of fighters and bomber jets to strike. and in a statement russia said i
christine. if you look at what has been going in tikrit over the past month, we saw iraqi forces making advances around that city. these forces are predominately made up of shi a militias. these are backed by 20,000 forces and 4,000 iraqi security forces. what happened is they did make great advances and got to the outskirts of tikrit. they could not push forward. officials here as described the situation around tikrit that battle for the city over the past couple weeks as a tactical pause. they say they have not been able to advance because of the heavy resistance they have been met with by isis whether snipers or improvised explosive devices or booby traps that stopped them from pushing forward. the iraqi government the united states and coalition cannot carry out air strikes without the permission of the iraqi government. the government tells us they requested assistance from the