World Bulletin / News Desk

Top ISILcommander leader Omar al-Shishani, known as Omar the Chechen, was "seriously injured" in a recent US strike in Syria but not killed, a monitoring group said Wednesday, after a US official said the militant had "likely died" in the attack.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that according to its sources the March 4 strike had indeed targeted the jihadist's convoy, killing his bodyguards, but he himself "was seriously injured" and taken to hospital.

"He's not dead," the Observatory's director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

The director of the pro-opposition monitoring group rejected the allegations, saying the militant, was “seriously injured” and taken to a hospital in ISIL’s de facto capital, Raqqah.

"He was taken from the province of Hasakah to a hospital in Raqqah province where he was treated by a jihadist doctor of European origin," he said.