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The Iraqi air force attacked a convoy of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in western Anbar province close to the Syrian border on Sunday, a military statement said.

The fate of the militant leader, who has declared himself the leader of a Caliphate in areas it controls in Iraq and Syria, is still unknown, the statement said.

"Iraqi air forces have bombed the convoy of the terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi while he was heading to Karabla to attend a meeting with Daesh commanders", the statement read, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

There have been many previous claims that Baghdadi was targeted, injured or killed. The Iraqi government has led the way, insisting on several occasions that he had been wounded.

Indeed, it even stated that the man at the podium in Mosul in July 2014 was an imposter - Baghdadi had been injured days before in battle. Not so.

In November 2014, the Iraqi government insisted he had been injured in an airstrike in the north of the country. But the blurred pictures released could have been of anyone.

In January 2015, the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said Baghdadi had been injured in an airstrike near the Syrian border, and that it was a "miracle" that he had survived. That attack may have been close to its target, but only killed one of Baghdadi's closest aides.

A rapid rise

Baghdadi's rise was rapid, evolving from a small-time fighter to chief  in a few years. Before his grand entrance in Mosul, the only publicly available image of him was a

Baghdadi was arrested by US forces in 2006, and held in Camp Bucca, the main US-run prison in Iraq.

mugshot from the early 2000s.

Baghdadi was born Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarri to a religious family in Samarra in 1971. He studied Islamic doctrine at Baghdad University in the 1990s and it is likely he held a religious position when the US invaded in 2003.

It is believed that soon after Baghdadi began fighting in Anbar, the stronghold of Tawhid and Jihad led by the Jordanian, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Reports suggest that Baghdadi was involved in smuggling fighters across from Syria while also leading the Sharia courts set up by Zarqawi.

However, Baghdadi was arrested by US forces in 2006, and held in Camp Bucca, the main US-run prison in Iraq. It was there he began to mix with a hardcore of religiously inspired extremists and after his release in the late 2000s, he joined the Islamic State of Iraq, the successor to al-Qaeda in Iraq whose methods and ferocious attacks on civilians of all sects had been condemned by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Baghdadi climbed the ranks inside the organisation, no doubt helped by his religious education, before being declared leader in 2010 after his predecessor, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was killed in a US airstrike.

It was from here that he set about creating a vision that even al-Qaeda opposed. Renaming the group the Islamic State in Iraq was a forewarning of the intention to move from low-level guerrilla operations to the creation of a territorial entity.

Baghdadi looked to Syria and the developing war to push his vision, sending his lieutenant, Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, to create the Nusra Front, a linked but independent group that would fight the Assad regime.