The raid, the reveal: The takedown of Baghdadi
WASHINGTON (AP) — The helicopters flew low and fast into the night, ferrying US special forces to a compound where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hiding in Syria.
Half a world away, US President Donald Trump watched the raid in real time via a video link as troops blasted into the hideout and sent the most-wanted militant running the last steps of his life.
The daring raid was the culmination of years of steady intelligence-gathering work — and 48 hours of hurry-up planning once Washington got word that Baghdadi would be at a compound in northwestern Syria.
The night unfolded with methodical precision and unexpected turns.
This reconstruction is based on the first-blush accounts of Trump and other administration officials eager to share the details of how the US snared its top target, as well observations from startled villagers who had no idea Baghdadi was in their midst.
Events developed quickly once the White House learned on Thursday there was “a high probability” that alBaghdadi would be at an Idlib province compound.
Trump got back to the White House at 4:18 p.m. By 5 p.m., he was in a suit in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing to monitor the raid. They named it after Kayla Mueller, an American humanitarian worker abused and killed by Baghdadi.
Moments after the White House team had gathered, US aircraft, mostly twinrotor CH-47 helicopters, took off from Al-Asad air base in western Iraq. Within hours, al-Baghdadi was dead. The first inkling that something was afoot came when villagers saw helicopters swooping low on the horizon.
“We went out in the balcony to see and they started shooting, with automatic rifles. So we went inside and hid,” said an unidentified villager. Next came a large explosion — Trump said soldiers blasted a hole in the side of a building because they feared the entrance might have been booby-trapped.
Baghdadi fled into a network of underground bunkers and tunnels that snaked through the compound.
The stout, bearded militant leader wore a suicide vest and dragged along three children as he fled from the American troops.
Trump, happy to play up the drama, said that as US troops and their dogs closed in, the militant went “whimpering and crying and screaming all the way” to his death.
“He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down,” Trump said. “He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children.”
Baghdadi’s body was mutilated in the blast, and the tunnel caved in on him. To get to his corpse, troops had to dig through debris.
“There wasn’t much left,” Trump said, “but there are still substantial pieces that they brought back.”
That’s when the military raid turned into a forensics operation — and the special forces had come prepared.
They had brought along samples of al-Baghdadi’s DNA.
The soldiers who conducted the raid thought the man who fled looked like Baghdadi, but that wasn’t enough. Various accounts had heralded his death in the past, only for him to surface yet again.
This time there could be no doubt. Lab technicians conducted an onsite DNA test to make sure and within 15 minutes of his death, positively identified the target. “It was him,” Trump said. Baghdadi’s body wasn’t all they retrieved. Trump said US troops remained in the compound for about two hours after Baghdadi’s death and recovered highly sensitive material about the Islamic State group, including information about its future plans.