Who was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and why is his death important?

Baghdadi is thought to have been born in the central Iraqi city of Samarra in 1971. Though a weak student, whose poor eyesight disqualified him from joining the Iraqi military, he rose to command al-Qaida’s Iraqi division and then broke away to form Islamic State (Isis).

In July 2014, shortly after Isis said it had established a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, Baghdadi delivered a sermon from a mosque in the captured Iraqi city of Mosul. Appearing unmasked for the first time, he declared himself to be the caliph: the political and religious leader of the global Muslim community.

His declaration was roundly rejected by almost all Islamic religious authorities but his caliphate became a magnet for thousands of foreign fighters and women. The group attempted not just to hold territory but to administer it like a state, establishing a brutal justice system, collecting taxes and doling out public services.

Baghdadi had been seen publicly on only one other occasion: an 18-minute video released in April this year. Since 2016 he had a $25m bounty on his head.

He had been reported to have suffered serious injuries in airstrikes over the years and before Sunday there had occasionally been speculation that he had been killed, but he continued to resurface in audio tapes and videos.