The U.S. military conducted a raid in northwest Syria that targeted and killed Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al Qurayshi, the leader of ISIS, early Thursday morning.
Al Qurayshi, who took control of the terrorist group in October 2019 after Abu Bakr al Baghdadi killed himself as U.S. troops closed in on him in the same region, met the same fate as his predecessor. He detonated “a significant blast, killing himself and several others, including his wife and children,” according to a senior administration official, who noted that al Qurayshi was living on the third floor of a residential building surrounded by non-ISIS militants.
President Joe Biden, in his first remarks on the operation, said he considered conducting an airstrike, which would be safer for U.S. forces, but chose against it, opting for a much more dangerous mission to avoid causing civilian casualties.
“I directed the Department of Defense take every precaution possible to minimize civilian casualties,” the president said. “Knowing that this terrorist had chosen to surround himself with families, including children, we made a choice to pursue a special forces raid at a much greater risk to our own people rather than targeting him with an airstrike made. We made this choice to minimize civilian casualties.”
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The explosives caused the civilian casualties that have been reported, the official explained.
The Syrian White Helmets, also known as the Syria Civil Defence, recovered 13 bodies at the site, including six children and four women, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that 13 people lost their lives in the strike, though they report that four children and three women died. The official disputed the number of civilian deaths but did not provide a specific number that the Department of Defense had uncovered.
“The mission was successful,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. “There were no U.S. casualties.”
“The blast was so large on the third floor that it blew bodies outside of the house and into the surrounding areas. All casualties at the site were due to the acts of ISIS terrorists and inside the residents,” the official added.
U.S. troops were able to evacuate some people inside the building before the detonation occurred.
Al Qurayshi’s lieutenant, who was also in the residence, “barricaded himself and members of his own family,” while the underling and his wife “engaged” with the assault forces and were subsequently killed. Following their deaths, additional children exited the building.
The lieutenant helped al Qurayshi with the day-to-day operations from the residence via carrier because the ISIS leader didn’t leave the house.
The operation did not go perfectly, however. One of the helicopters that the troops used for infiltration and ex-filtration experienced “a mechanical issue and so it was properly of disposed at some distance from the site,” the official added, noting that it “had nothing to do with any kind of hostile action.”
Al Qurayshi was overseeing operations in Syria, including the massive prison break that ISIS launched last month, Biden noted. The multipronged attack focused on releasing imprisoned ISIS fighters at the Gweiran Prison, which housed thousands of inmates, did not play a direct role in the mission, which had been in the planning process for months.
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He was “the driving force behind the genocide of the Yazidi religious minority in northwestern Iraq in 2014 and enslavement of thousands of young leading girls, using rape as a weapon of war,” the official added. “He oversaw the network that included ISIS branches around the world from Africa to Afghanistan.”
