ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been 'critically injured' in air strikes in northern Iraq, it has been claimed.

The terror mastermind is said to have been wounded after a bombing raid in Al-Ba'aj, it has been reported locally.

However, it is not the first time claims have emerged that al-Baghdadi has been either hurt or killed and there has yet to be official confirmation.

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (pictured) has been 'critically injured' in air strikes in northern Iraq, it has been claimed

Buildings destroyed during previous clashes are seen as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, on January 23, 2017

The Pentagon said in December it believed that the ISIS chief was alive, despite repeated efforts by the US-led coalition to take out the jihadist group leader.

Baghdadi has kept a low profile, despite having declared himself the leader of a renewed Muslim caliphate, but last month released a defiant audio message urging his supporters to defend the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

It is not clear if he is in the besieged city, where he declared his caliphate in 2014 after the ISIS group seized territory covering much of eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

'We do think Baghdadi is alive and is still leading ISIL and we are obviously doing everything we can to track his movements,' Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told CNN.

'If we get the opportunity, we certainly would take advantage of any opportunity to deliver him the justice he deserves,' he said.

'We're doing everything we can. This is something we're spending a lot of time on.'

In mid-December, the United States more than doubled the bounty on the shadowy ISIS leader's head to $25 million.

The group has only released one video of Baghdadi, showing a man with a black and grey beard wearing a black robe and matching turban, dating back to 2014.

Cook suggested that Baghdadi is isolated because coalition raids have killed many ISIS leaders.

'He's having a hard time finding advisers and confidants to speak with because a lot of them are no longer with us,' the spokesman said.

According to an official Iraqi government document, Baghdadi was born in Samarra in 1971. He apparently joined the insurgency that erupted after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and spent time in an American military prison.

An Iraqi soldier walks amidst the debris at St. George's Monastery (Mar Gurguis), a historical Chaldean Catholic church on the northern outskirt of Mosul

There have been numerous reports in the last year that he has either been killed or injured - but none have yet been confirmed.

It comes amid separate reports an ISIS commander in charge of executing women has been assassinated in Iraq.

Saudi national Abu Abdel Rahman was killed by an unknown gunman in besieged Mosul, the terror group's northern Iraqi stronghold, according to a security source.

The fanatic, who oversaw the execution of women in the city, is understood to have been killed 'right on the spot'.

According to IB Times, the security source said: 'The unknown gunmen shot at Abu Abdel Rahman, Isis' senior commander, in al-Askari region in the centre of Mosul city, and he was killed right on the spot.'

It comes a day after it emerged that a British sniper in Iraq killed three ISIS terrorists with one bullet in what has been described as a shot in a million.

The SAS marksman fired one bullet that killed two men instantly before it ricocheted into a third during a November mission in a remote northern Iraqi village.

Wreckage: The Catholic church in Mosul is believed to have been destroyed by ISIS in 2015

The sniper fired his single .338 Lapua Magnum bullet from a L115A sniper rifle from a range of 1,800m just as the senior ISIS members prepared to fire shots into a crowd of women and children.

News of Rahman's assassination emerged as Iraqi forces retook two areas from ISIS in Mosul, sealing their control of the east bank three months into an offensive to reclaim the city.

And it comes as Ankara claimed 65 ISIS fighters had been killed by the Turkish army in northern Syria yesterday.

Turkey launched an operation to drive the jihadists away from the Syrian border five months ago and have been besieging ISIS controlled town of al-Bab for weeks.

In Mosul, Iraqi forces have recaptured 'Al-Milayeen neighbourhood and Al-Binaa al-Jahiz area and raised the Iraqi flag over the buildings', the military said in a statement.

'These are the last neighbourhoods of the centre of the city (on) the left bank,' the statement said, referring to eastern Mosul.

It also said that federal forces had retaken control of the road linking Mosul, Iraq's second city, to Dohuk, a provincial capital in the west of the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

Iraqi soldiers have been finding historical buildings in ruins after reclaiming parts of Mosul

The latest progress effectively seals the Iraqi forces' control over the east bank, with only the neighbourhood of Rashidiyah, on Mosul's northern edge, left to retake.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and top commanders in the Counter-Terrorism Service, which has spearheaded operations inside Mosul, had already declared the city's east 'liberated' on Wednesday.

The Joint Operations Command coordinating the battle against ISIS in Iraq had said then that a few more days would be needed to clear the last pockets of holdout jihadists.

Iraq's top brass and its foreign allies were expected to confer in the coming days on the strategy to adopt to conquer the west bank of Mosul, which is still under full ISIS control.

A huge offensive, Iraq's largest military operation in years, was launched on October 17 to retake Mosul, the last major stronghold ISIS had in the Iraqi part of its self-proclaimed and now crumbling 'caliphate'.

News of the assassination emerged as Iraqi forces retook two areas from ISIS in Mosul, sealing their control of the east bank three months into an offensive to reclaim the city

Iraq's top brass and its foreign allies were expected to confer in the coming days on the strategy to adopt to conquer the west bank of Mosul, which is still under full ISIS control

Residents of parts of eastern Mosul, some for several weeks already, have tried to resume a normal life, despite the circulation of goods being restricted.

On Sunday, a few dozen students and activists gathered at the gate of the University of Mosul, which ISIS had used as a headquarters during its two-and-a-half-year rule and which was severely damaged in the fighting.

They celebrated the recapture of one of the country's most prestigious institutions by chanting slogans, raising an Iraqi flag above the arch that marks the campus entrance and unfurling a banner calling for its swift reopening.

The west side of Mosul is a little smaller but more densely populated and home to some of the jihadists' traditional bastions.

It contains the old city of Mosul, a maze of narrow streets crammed with shops, mosques and churches that will be impassable for larger military vehicles.

That area houses Al-Nuri mosque where the ISIS group's Iraq-born supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate in June 2014 after his forces took the city.

'IS and Sunni insurgent groups also have had historical support zones in western Mosul,' said Patrick Martin, Iraq analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, warning that federal forces there may receive less warm a welcome than in the east.

The United Nations and other relief organisations had planned for an unprecedented exodus of up to one million people, but so far about 160,000 civilians have been displaced as a result of the Mosul offensive.