government s main hub for information and analysis aggregation is also engaged and monitoring events in barcelona. with a specific note to the type of weapon used, the van against the individuals and what may ultimately be a hostage situation that continues to develop. as a side note, what we ve seen from a counterterrorism sources that these isa social accounts, they call them fanboy accounts, they are celebrating what happened in barcelona. i would emphasize that this is not a claim of responsibility but our contact who provides this information to law enforcement agencies did note that in early july there was a reference on a isis affiliated account about barcelona, and references to spain are highly infrequent on these accounts for that reason. it was forwarded to federal law
the russians who have not focused on isis, but focused on the opposition fighting assad. at this stage, that is a really big if. let s take a look at what we re hearing from the russians. defense ministry is investigating the possibility that abu bakr al bagdadi was killed. there was an air strike carried out on may 28th in the evening that targeted south of raqqah a military isis council meeting. 300 isis soldiers at the meeting and 30 isis senior leaders and according to various channels, they also believe that abu bakr al bagdadi was at the meeting too. this raises a few red flags, chris. simply put, abu bakr al bagdadi takes security seriously. he does not move around in large groups like that. it will be unusual for the leader of isis to be attending a
iraq and syria, but at the same time they re expanding to literally dozens of countries around the world. southeast asia, north africa, you name it, there are now isis chapters everywhere. we heard last week that isis took over tora bora, that mountain enclave, cave network in the on the afghan/pakistan border. you know, think about that. so, you know, what we have is a me tsaization of isis that will continue whether or not al baghdadi is alive or dead. now he was the spiritual head of the group, but, you know, it s unclear how much he was really running day-to-day operations. you know, we just don t know. and, you know, now what they ve done is they ve franchised and all these various isis affiliated groups and all of these countries, will be fine to operate with or without abu bakr al baghdadi in a sense his mission to establish isis as the most powerful and most dangerous terrorist organization in the world has succeeded, even and
used it to kill reportedly 36 isis affiliated fighters. about $500,000 per guy. here s strange break in the story tonight. last night on that story, the hill newspaper published a story about that bomb, the use of that bomb, the decision to use that bomb. and in their story the hill published a number of quotes from somebody who they described as a sent.com spokesman. and the quotes were attributed to an unnamed, but apparently official centcom, part of the u.s. military for which their area of responsibility is the middle east. so they reuoting this centcom military spokesman.
but the quotes are a little weird for a military spokesman. i ll show you what i mean. asked by the hill about what else was in the area that was hit by that giant bomb other than these isis fighters. the spokesman said, quote, i can guarantee there s nothing in the area. it s pure enemy. it s pure enemy? military spokesmen in the military don t talk like this. asked about why they used this bomb, the spokesman said this, quote, we mean business. president trump said prior that once he gets in, he s going to kick the beep out of the enemy. that was his promise, and that s exactly what we re doing. this is a u.s. military spokesman? seriously? actually, no. turns out not. centcom just put up a follow-up press releases. this is actually from centcom and it s got a named person on