During a US raid in Syria, an Islamic State leader was killed.
As US forces approached, al-Qurayshi, like al-Baghdadi, detonated a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children, according to Biden.
President Joe Biden announced that the leader of the deadly Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed Thursday when he blew himself up together with members of his family during a nocturnal assault carried out by US special operations soldiers in northwestern Syria.
The raid was aimed at Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who took over as the militant group’s commander on Oct. 31, just days after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US raid in the same location.
As US forces approached, al-Qurayshi, like al-Baghdadi, detonated a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children, according to Biden.
IS has been attempting a rebirth in the region, with a series of raids, including an assault late last month to seize a jail in northeast Syria housing at least 3,000 IS captives, the group’s most daring operation in years.
“This vile terrorist leader is no more thanks to the valor of our men,” Biden added. He said al-Qurayshi was behind the prison strike as well as the 2014 massacre against the Yazidi people in Iraq.
Witnesses said about 50 US special operations personnel arrived in helicopters and attacked a residence in a rebel-held corner of Syria, fighting gunmen for two hours. Residents in the town of Atmeh, near the Turkish border, described incessant shooting and explosions.
Biden stated that he directed US soldiers to “take every measure available to minimize civilian casualties,” which is why an airstrike on the home was not carried out.
Thirteen individuals were slain, including six children and four women, according to first responders.
U.S. personnel were able to remove 10 persons from the building, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby: a man, a woman, and four children from the first story, and four children from the second floor.
He claimed al-Qurayshi killed his wife and two children when he exploded the device. According to Kirby, US officials are conducting an investigation to see if any civilians were killed as a result of American operations.
Officials reported that fingerprints and DNA evidence proved al-death. Qurayshi’s
According to an official, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and senior national security aides watched a live-feed of the operation from the White House Situation Room. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan kept the president updated on the commandos’ arduous flight out of Syria overnight.
The operation was a military triumph for the US at a crucial time, after disasters elsewhere — especially the tumultuous Afghanistan exit — had led allies and foes to fear that US strength was waning globally.
The top story of the house, which was flanked by olive trees in fields outside of Atmeh, was shattered, and blood was spattered inside. Several residents and a journalist on assignment for The Associated Press reported they spotted body parts spread near the scene. For fear of retaliation, the majority of people spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In a brief statement, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said, “The mission was successful.” “There were no victims in the United States.”
Idlib is mostly controlled by Turkish-backed forces, but it is also a bastion for al-Qaida, with numerous key operatives residing there. Other militants, especially IS-affiliated radicals, have sought safety in the region.
“The initial few moments were terrible; no one understood what was going on,” Jamil el-Deddo, a refugee camp resident, said. “We were worried it could be Syrian aircraft,” he added, referring to crude explosives-filled containers used by President Bashar Assad’s forces against opponents during the Syrian conflict.
The low house’s top floor was almost completely destroyed, sending white bricks tumbling to the ground below.
The walls and floor of the remaining structure were covered in blood. A child’s wooden crib and a stuffed rabbit doll were found in a wrecked bedroom. A blue plastic baby swing was still hanging on one of the shattered walls. Books on religion, including a biography of Islam’s founder.
Al-Qurayshi had kept an extremely low profile since he took over leadership of the Islamic State. He had not appeared in public, and rarely released any audio recordings. His influence and day-to-day involvement in the group’s operations was not known and it is difficult to gauge how his death will affect the group.
U.S. officials said Al-Qurayshi never left his third floor apartment, where he lived with his family, except to bathe on the building’s roof. He communicated only through couriers, according to U.S. officials, directly overseeing the group’s operations in Syria, including last month’s assault on attack on the prison.
In December, a tabletop model of the three-floor house was brought to the Situation Room.
The second floor of the house was occupied by a lower-ranking Islamic State leader and his family, but the first floor contained civilians who were unconnected to the terrorist group and unaware of al-Qurayshi’s presence, according to U.S. officials, who described them as the IS leader’s unwitting human shields.
Biden gave “the final go” on the mission on Tuesday morning during his daily national security briefing in the Oval Office, where he was joined by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.
In the first stages of the operation, U.S. commandos approached the building and announced their presence. Residents and activists described witnessing a large ground assault, with U.S. forces using megaphones urging women and children to leave the area.
Much to the relief of U.S. officials, the family on the first floor exited the building unharmed.
The IS lieutenant, who officials did not name, who lived on the second floor barricaded himself inside along with his wife and engaged in combat with the commandos who entered the home after the explosion. After a firefight, in which both were killed, officials said four children left the building. Kirby said that it appeared that a child on the second floor also died, though the circumstances were not clear.
The special operations forces spent about two hours on the ground, longer than usual for such an operation — indicative, U.S. officials said, of caution to minimize civilian casualties.
Before they left, another firefight erupted with a local extremist group. At least two fighters were killed, officials said.
U.S. troops launched the airborne raid from a base in the region, but officials would not specify the precise location due to operational security concerns. They added that the U.S. “deconflicted” the operation with a “a range of entities” but did not specify whether those included Russia, which has supported the Assad government in Syria.
There was no comment from the Syrian government, which rarely acknowledges or comments on attacks by foreign countries targeting areas outside its control.
A U.S. official said one of the helicopters in the raid suffered a mechanical problem and was redirected to a site nearby, where it was destroyed.
Through slickly engineered propaganda, including brutal beheading videos, IS emerged as a dominant global extremist threat in the past decade. Its clarion call to followers in the West to either join its self-described caliphate in Syria, or to commit acts of violence at home, inspired killings in the U.S. as well as thousands of travelers determined to become foreign fighters. The allure of IS to would-be militants has proved challenging for the West to fully stamp out even amid leadership changes and U.S. military strikes and raids.
At the height of its territorial conquests around 2014, the Islamic State controlled more than 40,000 square miles stretching from Syria to Iraq and ruled over 8 million people.
Last month‘s attack on the prison in Hasaka marked the group’s biggest military operation since it was defeated and its members scattered underground in 2019. The attack appeared aimed to break free senior IS operatives in the prison.
It took 10 days of fighting for U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces to retake the prison fully, and the force said more than 120 of its fighters and prison workers were killed along with 374 militants.
The U.S.-led coalition has targeted high-profile militants on several occasions in recent years, aiming to disrupt what U.S. officials say is a secretive cell known as the Khorasan group that is planning external attacks. A U.S. airstrike killed al-Qaida’s second in command, former bin Laden aide Abu al-Kheir al-Masri, in Syria in 2017.