US president Joe Biden said the leader of the Islamic State terror group was killed by an explosion as American special forces launched a night-time raid on his hideout in north-west Syria.
Mr Biden said Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi set off an explosion that killed himself and family members as American troops approached the building in which he lived on the third floor.
“He chose to blow himself up not just with a vest but to blow up that third floor, rather than face justice for the crimes he has committed,” Biden said.
The raid, which lasted about two hours, appeared to be one of the biggest US assaults of its type in north-west Syria since special forces conducted an operation in 2019 during which Islamic State's founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in similar circumstances.
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Qurayshi succeeded Baghdadi as the jihadi group’s leader.
The Syria Civil Defence, a rescue service also known as the White Helmets, said its teams recovered the bodies of at least 13 people, including six children and four women, from the site of the raid. The non-governmental group, which operates in opposition areas, said in a statement that the people were killed in clashes and bombing that followed an airborne operation.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said US troops landed in helicopters in the village of Atmeh in Idlib province, the last enclave held by Syrian opposition forces, and met resistance from fighters on the ground as they launched an assault on a building.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby confirmed that US troops encountered fire as they launched their assaults on the building. US troops were able to evacuate 10 people from the building, including eight children, and there were no individuals being held in US custody following the operation, he added.
Mr Biden said he chose to order a riskier special forces raid rather than an air strike in order to minimise civilian casualties.
Reward
Senior administration officials said the operation was complicated by the fact that a family was living on the first floor with no knowledge of Qurayshi’s presence upstairs. They added that during the raid an associate of Qurayshi barricaded himself in the second floor as US special forces approached. An American helicopter also suffered a mechanical failure.
US raids against militant targets have come under scrutiny after the Pentagon was forced to apologise for what it described as a "tragic mistake" when an Afghan aid worker and seven children were killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan last year.
Kirby said Thursday that the latest operation was “completely different” from the one in Afghanistan, and that “the desire to avoid civilian harm was baked in months ago in this particular plan”.
The US had offered a reward of up to $10 million (€8.7 million) for information about the whereabouts of Qurayshi, who was designated a terrorist by Washington under the name Amir Muhammad Sa'id Abdal-Rahma al-Mawla.
The US said he was born in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in 1976 and was a religious scholar within the al-Qaeda terror group before joining Islamic State, also known as Isis, where he steadily rose through its ranks to become deputy emir. Islamic State, which has inspired attacks across the world, began as an offshoot of al-Qaeda.
The latest special forces mission comes two weeks after Islamic State militants launched a bold assault on a prison holding thousands of suspected jihadis in north-east Syria that is controlled by US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, which operate the prison in Hasaka, said 121 prison staff and SDF fighters and 374 Isis militants were killed in the week-long assault on the detention facility. The US supported the SDF's battle to retake control of the prison with air strikes and by moving Bradley fighting vehicles into the area.
Chaos
The US has just under 1,000 troops in Syria where they support the SDF and have been involved in the fight against Islamic State.
Islamist militants exploited the chaos of the civil war in Syria to gain footholds in the country, with Islamic State seizing control of swaths of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in a blitz in 2014.
At its height, the movement controlled an area the size of Britain, but it was driven from territorial strongholds in both countries by international coalitions.
Islamic State surrendered the final enclave in Syria under its control three years ago, but the attack on the prison in Hasaka has underscored the threat the jihadi group continues to pose.
Idlib province, which is home to about three million people, many who fled to escape Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's regime, is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which has emerged as the most powerful Islamist militant group in Syria.
The group, which is designated a terrorist organisation by the US, has long been considered an affiliate of al-Qaeda, a rival to Islamic State. HTS has attempted to rebrand itself and distance itself from the network formed by Osama bin Laden. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022