The leader of the Islamic State group has apparently released a new audio recording calling on members of the extremist group to do all they can to free IS detainees and women held in jails and camps.
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The audio purported to be by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in which he also says his group is carrying out attacks in different countries, was his first public statement since April, when the shadowy leader appeared in a video for the first time in five years.
In the 30-minute recording released by a media arm of the group, Al-Furqan, al-Baghdadi asks: "How can a Muslim enjoy life?" when Muslim women are held in camps he called "prisons of humiliation run by Crusaders and their Shi'ite followers".
With a $US25 million US bounty on his head, al-Baghdadi is the world's most wanted man, responsible for steering his violent organisation into mass slaughter of opponents and directing and inspiring terror attacks across continents and in the heart of Europe.
IS was defeated in Iraq in 2017 while in Syria it lost its last territory in March, marking the end of the extremists' self-declared caliphate.
Despite these battlefield defeats, IS sleeper cells have continued to launch attacks in Iraq and Syria.
"Daily operations are under way on different fronts," he said. He cited several regions such as Mali and the Levant but gave no dates.
Al-Baghdadi says in the new recording that militants should target interrogators and judges who are questioning IS members.
He also urged detainees and women held in camps to be patient.
Some remain ardent supporters of its ideology and live in camps they fled to in eastern Syria, now under the control of the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces that drove IS from its final piece of territory in March.
One of the largest camps - al-Hol in Syria's north-eastern Hasakeh province - is home to 73,000 people, many of them families of IS fighters who emerged from the group's last bastion in Syria. Among them are Australians.
"As for the worst and most important matter, the prisons, the prisons, oh soldiers of the caliphate. Your brothers and sisters; do your utmost to free them and tear down the walls restricting them," Baghdadi said.
"Do not hesitate to pay ransom if you cannot free them by force, and attack their butchers like investigators and judges and any ... aggressors," he added.
Australian Associated Press
