‘HE DIED LIKE A DOG
Trump: ISIS boss went out with a ‘whimper’
IS IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi blew himself up as US forces cornered him, President Trump revealed yesterday. Trump, VP Mike Pence and the national-security team watched( above) as the savage died “whimpering and crying.”
He once led the most bloodthirsty terror group of the past decade — but ISIS mastermind Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died “whimpering,” President Trump announced Sunday.
Cornered by US forces in a remote compound in Syria, the jihadi leader detonated a suicide vest and went out like a “coward,” the commander in chief said at a triumphant press briefing as he confirmed reports of al-Baghdadi’s demise.
“Last night, the United States brought the world’s Number 1 terrorist leader to justice. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead,” Trump told reporters assembled in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room.
“He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way,” Trump continued. “He died like a dog. He died like a coward . . . The world is now a much safer place.”
Trump’s announcement came as new details of the momentous mission and its aftermath emerged Sunday, including:
Al-Baghdadi blew himself up with three of his children. Two of his wives also died in the raid and were outfitted with suicide vests — but they did not detonate, Trump said.
Trump and other highranking US officials received confirmation al-Baghdadi was dead through a radio message: “Got him, 100-percent confidence, jackpot.”
Coalition intelligence forces got their break when one of alBaghdadi’s wives and a courier were arrested over the summer and let slip the terrorist’s location under interrogation, according to The New York Times.
The fateful mission was named in honor of Kayla Mueller, an American aid worker who was among al-Baghdadi’s victims. Mueller was captured by ISIS in 2013 when she crossed from Turkey into Syria to visit a hospital, and beheaded in 2015 after years of torture.
Some top US lawmakers were not briefed on the raid, including Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with Trump citing concerns that the mission would be compromised in the “leaking machine” that is Washington, DC.
Al-Baghdadi — a hard-line Sunni Muslim extremist who rose from al Qaeda foot soldier to the brutal, self-styled caliph of ISIS’s regime — was considered the world’s most dangerous fugitive, with a $25 million bounty on his head.
Barely 12 hours after he met his violent end, Trump heralded the death-defying mission as the culmination of years of American military and intelligence effort.
“Capturing or killing Baghdadi has been the top national security priority of my administration,” he said. “US Special Operations Forces executed a dangerous and daring nighttime raid in northwestern Syria and accomplished their mission in grand style.”
Trump crowed that the elimination of al-Baghdadi was even more significant than the killing by US troops of Osama bin Laden.
“This is the worst ever,” he said. “Osama bin Laden was very big but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade
Center. This is a man who built a whole — as he would like to call it — a country, a caliphate. And was trying to do it again.”
Weaving through waves of fierce ground fire, eight American helicopters dropped dozens of elite US Army troops at al-Baghdadi’s doorstep, said Trump, who noted that he viewed real-time video of the mission from the White House Situation Room — “as though you were watching a movie.”
The commandos pushed into the compound, killed a handful of ISIS guards making a desperate last stand and evacuated 11 children to safety — as al-Baghdadi sought shelter in a “deadend” subterranean tunnel with three of his young children, according to the president.
With a US military dog coming down after him, the fiend — whose group made a show out of beheading innocent hostages and rallied supporters around the world to acts of improvised terror — triggered an explosive vest. The blast killed al-Baghdadi and his three children, wounded the canine and caused a small cave-in.
Troops compared gore found among the rubble to previously obtained samples of al-Baghdadi’s DNA and got a match.
The mission took about two hours, and in addition to the service dog resulted in minor injuries to two American soldiers.
“The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread,” said Trump. “Terrified of the American forces bearing down on him.”