PRESIDENT Joe Biden has revealed that the leader of the Islamic State (IS) group had been killed during an overnight US special forces raid in north-west Syria.
Biden stated that the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi had “removed a major terrorist threat to the world”.
Adding that Qurayshi detonated a bomb that killed himself and members of his own family “in a final act of desperate cowardice”.
According to Syrian first responders, they said they found the bodies of 13 people after the raid.
The targeted location for the operation was a two-storey residential building on the outskirts of the opposition-held town of Atmeh at the northern Idlib province, close to the border with Turkey.
The region is well known as a stronghold for jihadist groups that are fierce rivals of IS, as well as Turkish-backed rebel factions fighting the Syrian government.
According to US officials, president Biden was first briefed by US military commanders over a month ago on the operation to capture or kill Qurayshi, a veteran Iraqi militant also known as Abdullah Qardash and Hajji Abdullah.
Intelligence reports also established that Qurayshi was living with his family on the second floor of the residential building in Atmeh from which he never ventured to go out from, instead he used couriers to dispatch his orders to IS cells in Syria and elsewhere.
Another family not believed to be connected to IS or aware of Qurayshi’s presence lived on the ground floor.
In order to minimize civilian casualties, Biden ruled out an air strike and gave a final go-ahead for the special forces raid on Tuesday, monitoring it in real time from the White House situation room as multiple helicopters arrived in Atmeh around midnight this Morning.
Local sources also reported that the US special forces faced stiff resistance on the ground, and came under fire from anti-aircraft guns mounted on vehicles as gunfire and shelling were heard for two hours before the helicopters left.
US officials also revealed that the family living on the ground floor (a woman, a man and a number of children) were evacuated to safety at the beginning of the raid.
Reuters news agency however disclosed that Qurayshi then “exploded a bomb that killed him and members of his own family, including women and children”,
“While we are still assessing the results of this operation, this appears to be the same cowardly terrorist tactic we saw in the 2019 operation that eliminated al-Baghdadi,” they added.
The Islamic leader, Qurayshi’s predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then killed himself and three children by detonating an explosive vest during a US special forces raid on a hideout that was only 16km (10 miles) away from Atmeh.
