BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An aide to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in an air strike near the city of Falluja, Iraqi state television reported on Monday.
State television identified the man as Abu Huthaifa al-Yamani. It did not say when the strike took place or give further details. It was not immediately possible to confirm the death or whether Yamani was an aide to Baghdadi.
Iraqi security officials have not confirmed the death.
Contradictory reports have emerged about the fate of Baghdadi himself after U.S.-led air strikes against the group in at least two locations in Iraq on Friday.
Islamic State, which swept through northern Iraq in June virtually unopposed by the Iraqi army, has declared a caliphate in the parts of Iraq and Syria it controls.
Major Curtis Kellogg, spokesman at the U.S. military's Central Command, said it had no information to corroborate media reports that Baghdadi was wounded in any strike on the city of Mosul in the north and al-Qaim to the west.
The strikes could have killed or wounded some of his aides, who Iraqi officials said were in gatherings targeted by the strikes.
Falluja is an Islamic State stronghold to the west of Baghdad in the Sunni Muslim heartland Anbar Province.
The United States and its allies launched a barrage of attacks against Islamic State over the weekend, conducting 23 air strikes in Syria and 18 in Iraq against the militant group since Friday, U.S. Central Command said.
In Iraq, seven strikes hit near Baiji and others in or near Falluja, Mosul, al-Qaim, Haditha, Ramadi and Rutba.
In a statement, U.S. Central Command said the strikes in Syria included 13 aimed near the besieged border town of Kobani and 10 near Dayr Az Zawr.
(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Louise Ireland)