Updated 2.54pm
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and three of his children after US special forces operators trapped him in a dead-end tunnel in Syria, US President Donald Trump announced Sunday.
"His body was mutilated by the blast. The tunnel had caved in on it in addition. But test results gave certain immediate and totally positive identification. It was him.
"The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread, terrified of the American forces bearing down on him," Trump said at the White House.
Long pursued by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS), Baghdadi has been erroneously reported dead several times in recent years.
Baghdadi, a native of Iraq around 48 years old, built the violent jihadist movement into a potent force, in 2014 establishing its own "caliphate" territory across large swathes of Syria and Iraq.
It was blamed for the deaths of thousands of civilians, in summary executions and beheadings, and accused of war crimes.
But Baghdadi has been on the run since a US-led coalition slowly destroyed the group's organization and ousted it from its claimed territory in a two-year campaign, finally declaring victory over IS in March of this year.
The United States had posted a $25 million reward for information on his whereabouts.
In rare video and audio messages this year Baghdadi called on IS fighters to regroup and try to free thousands of their comrades captured by the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria.
IS spokesman killed in a separate raid
The Islamic State group's spokesman was killed Sunday in northern Syria, hours after leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was announced dead.
An official of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces -- who asked not to be named because he is not authorised to speak on the issue -- said IS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir had been killed, after SDF chief Mazloum Abdi said he had been "targeted" in a fresh raid.
"Al-Muhajir, the right-hand of Baghdadi and the spokesman for IS, was targeted in the village of Ain al-Baydah near Jarablus, in a coordinated operation between SDF intelligence and the US army," Abdi said on Twitter.