Jane Onyanga-Omara

USA TODAY

A wife and suspected son of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, were arrested in Lebanon, according to reports on Tuesday.

The country's defense ministry confirmed to NBC News that al-Baghdadi's wife and child were detained. Military spokesman Col. Anis Khoury said the army is leading the investigation but declined to offer more details.

The Lebanese daily As-Safir was the first to break the news, saying the two were detained about 10 days ago near a border crossing point with Syria. It said the arrest was in "coordination with foreign intelligence agencies."

The two were carrying fake identification cards, the Associated Press reported, adding that the woman is being questioned. A DNA test is underway to confirm that the child is her son, AP said.

There are mixed reports regarding the gender of the child, with Reuters reporting that the Lebanese army detained al-Baghdadi's wife and daughter.

On Wednesday, Iraq's Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan Ibrahim denied that the arrested woman was al-Baghdadi's wife. He told the Associated Press that the woman is Saja Abdul Hamid al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi national who traveled to Syria before arriving in Lebanon.

Ibrahim says she is the sister of Omar Abdul Hamid al-Dulaimi, who is held in Iraq as a terror suspect. He says al-Baghdadi has two wives but neither is named Saja al-Dulaimi.

The news of the arrest comes amid attempts to reach a prisoner-exchange deal between Lebanese authorities, the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's Syria branch, which has held more than 20 Lebanese soldiers and policemen hostage since August.

They have demanded the release of Islamist prisoners being held by Lebanese authorities. On Monday night, the Nusra Front threatened to kill one of the soldiers it is holding captive.

If the woman is al-Baghdadi's wife, her arrest could be used as a bargaining chip for Lebanese authorities in their attempts to win the freedom of the troops.

Terrorism expert Sajjan M. Gohel, the international security director at the Asia Pacific Foundation, told CNN: "It's certainly a new dynamic because we've never seen anybody connected so close to al-Baghdadi being detained.

"Is he estranged from them? Has he fallen out with them? Were they escaping from him?"

French newspaper Le Monde described al-Baghdadi, formerly a longtime leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, as "the new Bin Laden." The United States has a $10 million bounty on his head.

Now based in Syria, al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu D'ua, has taken personal credit for a range of attacks in Iraq on both state security forces and ordinary citizens since 2011.

In July, a video surfaced of a man officials believe to be al-Baghdadi addressing a crowd from a mosque balcony in Mosul. The Iraqi city is home to some 2 million people and is part of a territory that includes parts of Iraq and Syria that the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, has declared to be its own Islamic state, or caliphate.

Little is known about al-Baghdadi's personal life. Conservative interpretations of Islam allow for a man to marry up to four wives.

Al-Baghdadi's first wife is believed to be Iraqi citizen Suja al-Dulaimi, who was reportedly held by Syrian authorities and freed in a prisoner exchange with al-Qaeda's branch in Syria earlier this year.

In March, the Nusra Front freed more than a dozen Greek Orthodox nuns, ending their four-month captivity in exchange for Syrian authorities releasing dozens of female prisoners.

Contributing: Bassem Mroue, Associated Press; Marco della Cava, USA TODAY