The following report is from the Associated Press:
The leader of the violent Islamic State group was killed Thursday, blowing himself up along with members of his family during an overnight raid carried out by U.S. special operations forces in northwestern Syria, President Joe Biden said.
The raid targeted Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who took over as head of the militant group on Oct. 31, 2019, just days after leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a U.S. raid in the same area. Biden said al-Qurayshi died as al-Baghdadi did, by exploding a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children, as U.S. forces approached.
The operation came as IS has been trying for a resurgence, with a series of attacks in the region, including an assault late last month to seize a prison in northeast Syria holding at least 3,000 IS detainees, its boldest operation in years.
“Thanks to the bravery of our troops this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said. He said al-Qurayshi had been responsible for the prison strike, as well as genocide against the Yazidi people in Iraq in 2014.
About 50 U.S. special operations forces landed in helicopters and attacked a house in a rebel-held corner of Syria, clashing for two hours with gunmen, witnesses said. Residents described continuous gunfire and explosions that jolted the town of Atmeh near the Turkish border, an area dotted with camps for internally displaced people from Syria’s civil war.
Biden said he ordered U.S. forces to “take every precaution available to minimize civilian casualties,” the reason they did not conduct an airstrike on the home.
First responders reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said U.S. forces were able to evacuate 10 people from the building: a man, a woman and four children from the first floor and four children from the second floor. He said when al-Qurayshi detonated the bomb, he also killed his wife and two children. Kirby said that U.S. officials were conducting an assessment to determine whether American action resulted in any civilian deaths.
U.S. forces took fingerprints and DNA, which confirmed al-Qurayshi’s death, officials said.
Biden, along with Vice President Kamala Harris and senior national security aides monitored a live-feed of the operation from the White House Situation Room according to an official. The president was kept abreast of the commandos’ long flight out of Syria by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan overnight.
The operation marked a military success for the United States at an important time after setbacks elsewhere — including the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal — had led allies and opponents to conclude U.S. power globally was weakening.
The house, surrounded by olive trees in fields outside Atmeh, was left with its top floor shattered and blood spattered inside. A journalist on assignment for The Associated Press, and several residents, said they saw body parts scattered near the site. Most residents spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The mission was successful. There were no U.S. casualties.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a brief statement.
Idlib is largely controlled by Turkish-backed fighters but is also an al-Qaida stronghold and home to several of its top operatives. Other militants, including extremists from the rival IS group, have also found refuge in the region.
“The first moments were terrifying; no one knew what was happening,” said Jamil el-Deddo, a resident of a nearby refugee camp. “We were worried it could be Syrian aircraft, which brought back memories of barrel bombs that used to be dropped on us,” he added, referring to crude explosives-filled containers used by President Bashar Assad’s forces against opponents during the Syrian conflict.
The top floor of the low house was nearly destroyed, sending white bricks tumbling to the ground below.
Blood could be seen on the walls and floor of the remaining structure. A wrecked bedroom had a child’s wooden crib and a stuffed rabbit doll. On one damaged wall, a blue plastic baby swing was still hanging. Religious books, including a biography of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad, were in the house.
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.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
[7] Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths. [8] The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.Isaiah 59:7-8
That is all America is: a murderous, thieving, miserable, broken-down empire. This is what killing innocents for no reason looks like in the media and government: “counterterrorism,” and “peacekeeping.” I do not defend ISIS and the barbarous practices that are conducted per the teachings of Islam, but, what’s it to me and you? They did nothing to us, so, mind your own business!
Oh, but you see, America cannot do that: they have an empire to keep, to enrich the military industrial complex some more, and protect their interest groups. 9/11 was an obvious inside con-job by the government, but records show that almost of the people who crashed the planes into the Trade Towers were from Saudi Arabia. Did America attack them? No, and they can’t, because that’s where we get the oil from.
Biden did not order anything: he couldn’t order a Dominoes pizza if he tried! This is the military industrial complex doing what they do best: killing the lives of innocents. But yet, the military calls this a “success.”
I do not know much about this “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi” guy, but how much you want to bet it was some defector from the U.S., and the government needed him dead, no matter the cost? This was the case with Osama Bin-Laden, or, also known as Tim Osman, who used to be a CIA agent. You can read about it in an article posted in 2001, and this one too.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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God bless America? NEVER!!! Jacob, Bryan, somebody, anybody, answer me this: why on Earth should God be so obligated to throw his blessings on this disgusting vile fallen empire of Christendom (which is NOT true Bible believing Christianity) and PRIDE?
I hear that song by Lee Greenwood “God bless the USA” and I want to puke! Lee Greenwood’s fever dream is about to be severely and rudely interrupted by the call of reality and the Truth (Jesus included) and he’ll come back to reality with a big loud thud!
It’s of not much importance but I happen to have Syrian heritage as well as Mexican, Dutch, and Spanish. To be living in the midst of a nation that calls these mercenaries we call “troops” heroes and praises them whenever they blow up random nations and kill millions of innocent men, women, and children and even praise them in their church buildings “after the church service we’ll be having a Veterans Day potluck dinner to honor our veterans and troops,” “these young men just graduated high school and college and are joining the military let’s pray over them Praise the lord,” like Bryan Denlinger said in his video Why God HATES Modern “christians” Hands that shed innocent blood: GOD HATES YA!!!