Ayatollah Ali KhameneI's representative says Islamic State's Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi 'definitely dead'

Islamic State's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is "definitely dead", Iran's state news agency quoted a representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying on Thursday.

"Terrorist Baghdadi is definitely dead," cleric Ali Shirazi, who is representative to the Quds Force, told IRNA without elaborating.

The Quds Force is in charge of operations outside Iran's borders by the country's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iranian Foreign Ministry officials were not available to comment on the report of Baghdadi's death.

The secretive Islamic State leader has frequently been reported killed or wounded since he declared a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from a mosque in Mosul in 2014, after his fighters seized large areas of northern Iraq.

Russia said on June 17 its forces might have killed Baghdadi in an air strike in Syria. Washington said on Thursday it had no information to corroborate such reports. Iraqi officials have also been sceptical in recent weeks.