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(Image: GETTY)

Baghdadi died in an air strike on ISIS's stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria, acccording to Iranian state media and pro-government Turkish daily Yenis Safak.

The development is a hammer blow to the under-siege death cult.

It comes as RAF jets lay waste to ISIS in Iraq – blitzing factories and positions as Iraqi government forces close in for the kill in the terrorist stronghold of Fallujah.

(Image: AP)

The Abna24 website said al-Baghdadi had been killed on Sunday morning by an air strike in Syria but the US-led coalition has made no comment.

Reports of his death were running on Iranian state media and the Turkish daily Yenis Safak.

Al-Baghdadi, who is a shadowy figure, became a Sunni cleric and reportedly studied for a doctorate at the University of Baghdad.

The ISIS leader's family claims to trace its lineage back to the descendants of Prophet Muhammad.

(Image: GETTY)

His escaped former wife Saga al-Dulmaimi said that when the pair eloped he was a “normal person" who worked as a university lecturer.

"At the time his name was Hisham Mohammad. He was a family man,” she told Swedish newspaper Expressen.

"How he then became Emir of the most dangerous terrorist organisation in the world is a mystery to me."