Islamic State leader dead after US raid
U.S. troops carried out a dramatic raid in northwest Syria that led the Islamic State’s top leader to kill himself and his family as American forces closed in, President Joe Biden said Thursday, capping months of secretive planning for an assault designed to minimize the risk to innocent bystanders.
Their target was Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the terrorist group’s leader for less than three years, who had secluded himself on the top floor of a three-story building, Biden said in brief remarks at the White House. As elite U.S. Special Operations personnel approached, al-Qurayshi detonated some type of explosive device, leveling much of the structure and killing several of his family members, according to U.S. officials. Local first responders said 13 people died as a result of the raid, including six children.
“Last night’s operation took a major terrorist leader off the battlefield, and it sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: We will come after you and find you,” Biden said, noting that no Americans were killed in the operation.
The operation required the United States to fly through Russian-controlled airspace inside Syria.
Al-Qurayshi took control of the Islamic State group after his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed himself in a similar U.S. raid in northwest Syria in 2019. Although the militant organization’s reach has diminished since 2014, U.S. officials said al-Qurayshi was planning a comeback, citing last month’s bloody, multiday siege on Syria’s Hasakah prison, where hundreds of ISIS fighters have been detained. He also oversaw some of the militants’ most horrific activities, including its genocide of the Yazidi minority sect in Iraq in 2014.