The New York Times on Sunday demanded an apology from Fox News, asking it to retract a report blaming the newspaper for the escape of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2015, Politico reported. The New York Times took offence to the “malicious and inaccurate” segment on a show on Saturday and a report on Fox News website.

The host on the morning show “Fox & Friends” said the United States government would have had Baghdadi “based on the intelligence that we had, except someone leaked information to the failing New York Times”.

“I am writing on behalf of The New York Times to request an on-air apology and tweet from Fox & Friends in regards to a malicious and inaccurate segment ‘NY Times leak allowed ISIS leader to slip away,’” wrote Vice President, Communications, Danielle Rhodes Ha. She further said that nobody from Fox had reached out to the newspaper for comment before running the story on its website or on-air.

However, FoxNews refused that The New York Times had approached them. “The FoxNews.com story was already updated online and Fox & Friends provided an updated story to viewers this morning based on the FoxNews.com report,” the news channel said in a statement. “For all of their hyperventilating to the media about a correction, The New York Times didn’t reach out to anyone at Fox News until Sunday afternoon for a story that ran Friday night.”

While speaking at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, General Tony Thomas, who leads the US Special Operations Command, had told Fox that a promising lead on the Islamic State leader was lost after the media leak. “That was a very good lead,” Thomas said. “Unfortunately, it was leaked in a prominent national newspaper about a week later and that lead went dead.”

Later on Sunday, Fox News updated the story online with a statement from The New York Times. It quoted the newspaper as saying that Defense Secretary Ash Carter had made an official statement about the raid against senior Islamic State leader Abu Sayyaf on May 16, 2015.

“The Times described the piece to the Pentagon before publication, and they had no objections,” NYT said in its statement to Fox News. “No senior American official complained publicly about the story until now, more than two years later.”

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump had accused the newspaper of foiling a mission to kill al-Baghdadi. However, he did not specify which report he thought had caused the alleged damage to the operation.

Islamic State chief

On July 22, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters that he thought al-Baghdadi was still alive. Despite various reports saying he was dead, Mattis had told Pentagon reporters, “I think Baghdadi’s alive...and I will believe otherwise when we know we’ve killed him.”

Mattis added that he thinks that Baghdadi still had a role in the Islamic State, while other Pentagon officials said he was no longer in charge of the organisation’s day-to-day activities, The New York Times reported.

On July 11, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said al-Baghdadi had been killed. The militant group had also confirmed the news then and said it would soon announce a successor.

Earlier in June, Russia’s military had said that it was investigating whether Baghdadi had been killed in one of its airstrikes outside Raqqa, Syria’s de facto capital, on May 28.