Summary
The leader of Islamic State and one of the world’s most wanted men has been killed during an overnight raid in Syria by US special forces.
Here are the main developments:
- Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi died in the village of Atme, just 9 miles from where his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed during a similar US raid in October 2019.
- The pre-dawn attack on a house led to up to 13 fatalities, among them women and children.
- Without reference to the raid, Unicef confirmed at least six children were killed in Atme overnight.
- In a White House address, Joe Biden said Qurayshi blew himself up the third floor, killing his own family members.
- US officials said the raid was planned for months and lasted two hours.
- A White House official said that US forces “took a lot of information” from the compound that could “lead to other leads”.
- Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby said the Pentagon has “strong, strong indications” that civilian deaths in the raid were not caused by US forces.
- However, the Pentagon said it was willing to review the operation.
We are closing this blog for the night. Thanks for reading.
Updated
CNN just released a dramatic and graphic footage from the scene of the raid, which includes disturbing videos of rescue workers removing bodies of deceased children and shots of blood stains all around the compound.
The segment, narrated by CNN correspondent Arwa Damon, includes images of a separate building with large bullet holes and a video taken at night with the sound of helicopters and gunfire in the background.
ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed Wednesday during a US counterterrorism raid in northwest Syria. At least 13 people were killed, including six children.
— CNN International PR (@cnnipr) February 3, 2022
Here's @arwacnn's latest report, which includes very disturbing video from the scene. pic.twitter.com/Z8YbSI6tH5
The Washington Post spoke to people who live in the town where al-Qurayshi’s raid took place. They reported hearing the thunderous sounds of helicopters before a shower of gunfire appeared to fall from the sky. Here’s more:
It was sleepless night across Syria’s northern Idlib province, with alarming sounds, deadly violence and a barrage of breathless rumors. Grainy cellphone videos were passed around depicting fragments of an event — muzzle flashes, shouted entreaties — whose contours emerged only later, after the sun rose Thursday on a partially demolished and bloodied cinder block home.
Mahmoud al-Sheikh, who works at an auto repair shop less than a mile from the house, had also been kept awake by the sounds. He said he heard a soldier giving orders over a loudspeaker: “Children and women, leave. We are entering the house,” someone said.
Sheikh said he did not know who lived in the house, in the Syrian town of Atma, but he said he often saw women and small children coming in and out.
There was nothing terribly extraordinary about the men in the house, he added, saying they did not outwardly match the description of hard-line Islamist fighters who often wore long beards.
Residents who lived close to the house told Omar Nezhat, a local journalist, that they were interrogated by the soldiers, who marked their foreheads with numbers and told them not to worry, because American forces were there to kill an ISIS leader.
At least a dozen people, including six children, were killed along with Qurayshi, according to local first responders. The Pentagon said that three members of his family were killed when Qurayshi detonated an explosive device on the top floor of the building, along with a child who was killed on the floor below in circumstances that remained unclear.
Brett McGurk, the White House’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, told CNN that the raid went “almost exactly according to plan”, citing the mechanical issue that led to the destruction of a US helicopter.
McGurk said that forces were able to recover information from the compound, which served as al-Qurayshi operational headquarters.
“No doubt. Our forces on the site took a lot of information from the compound, and that will be analyzed by our professionals and will surely lead to other leads,” he said.
.@brett_mcgurk confirms U.S. Special Operations Forces obtained "a lot of information" from the raided ISIS compound that will "lead to other leads" in the war on terror. pic.twitter.com/S1HC2qnhxK
— Hallie Jackson Reports (@HallieOnMSNBC) February 3, 2022
Here’s the Guardian’s Martin Chulov and Julian Borger on some skepticism around potential civilian casualities that still remains after the administration’s press conference. The Pentagon has said it will review reports of civilian deaths from the raid:
A senior administration official said: “This is an operation that has been long in planning and from a tactical perspective, went precisely as expected.”
However, there was a significant discrepancy between the initial Pentagon report that eight children had been safely evacuated and two children were killed by the blast triggered by Qurayshi, and the accounts of first responders on the scene who say they found six children and four women dead.
“Some of the corpses in the area do not look like they died in an explosion. They look like they were hit by extremely heavy calibre gunfire,” Charles Lister, director of the Syria programme at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said. “And we do know, because I saw it in a video last night as it was happening, that at least one of the helicopters in the area fired its heavy machine guns at the building for over a minute straight.”
Pentagon spokesman Jack Kirby said that there were “strong, strong indications” that civilian deaths – those of Qurashi’s wife and their two children – were caused by the IS leader. But he said that the US would review the operation to determine whether American action resulted in any civilian deaths.
Al-Qurayshi was the one of the “key architects” behind the Islamic State slave trade of Yazidi women, according to nonprofit Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) in a statement about al-Qurayshi’s death.
“Hajji Abdullah (al-Qurayshi) had enormous power to persecute and punish IS’s enemies as far back as 2014. Not only was he one of the key architects of the Islamic State slave trade in Yazidi women and children, he personally enslaved and raped captive women,” said Nerma Jelacic, deputy director of CIJA, in a statement.
CIJA said that it has enough evidence to accuse al-Qurayshi of genocide, extermination, slavery, rape, gender-based persecution and “a host of other crimes”.
This is Lauren Aratani taking over for Nadeem Badshah.
Republicans are already criticizing Joe Biden for the raid, with James Inhofe, a Republican senator, saying in a statement that it “raises questions about the Biden administration’s counterterrorism strategy”.
Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, denounced Biden for the lack of “partnerships and presence” in Afghanistan. He also questioned what the US government would have done with al-Qurayshi should he have been captured.
“I have many questions about whether there were law enforcement elements in this operation, and what the administration intended to do with him, or what they’ll do with other dangerous terrorists that are captured in the battlefield,” Inhofe said in the statement.
It takes one sentence for ranking SASC member @JimInhofe to dismiss "this single operation," attack Biden, and turn the killing of the ISIS leader into a condemnation of Afghanistan pullout. (Fair question about potential detention, tho.) pic.twitter.com/hsYSHNHUNk
— Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron) February 3, 2022
U.S. house speaker Nancy Pelosi has praised Joe Biden for overseeing the military operation that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.
Last night, America delivered justice to the leader of ISIS and struck a serious blow to this terrorist group. Our entire nation is grateful for the patriotism and dedication of our military personnel and intelligence community.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) February 3, 2022
Iraqi military spokesman Yahya Rasool said Iraqi intelligence provided accurate information that led to the whereabouts of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, Reuters reports.
The leader of the militant group died when he blew himself and family members up during a U.S. military raid in Syria, U.S. president Joe Biden said.
Being an Islamic State leader is not what it used to be. The death of the latest IS supremo, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, far from the heartland of the terror group’s rise in Iraq in a frugal home in the back blocks of Syria, is another painful blow to an organisation that only five years ago held significant territory in both countries and cast a shadow across an entire region.
For nearly two decades, the man who came to be known as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was a central figure in the terror juggernaut that became the Islamic State. From fighter, to prisoner, strategist to leader, there were not many parts of the insurgency in which the 46-year-old jihadist had not had a hand.
Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the U.S. evacuated 10 people, including children, from the raid area.
U.S. forces also engaged in a firefight with one of Quraishi’s lieutenants and the lieutenant’s wife.
Both the lieutenant and his wife were killed, “and it appears as if a child was also killed” in the area, he added.
Summary
The leader of Islamic State and one of the world’s most wanted men has been killed during an overnight raid in Syria by US special forces.
Here are the main developments:
- Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi died in the village of Atme, just 9 miles from where his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed during a similar US raid in October 2019.
- The pre-dawn attack on a house led to up to 13 casualties, among them women and children.
- Without reference to the raid, Unicef confirmed at least six children were killed in Atme overnight.
- In a White House address, Joe Biden said Qurayshi blew himself up the third floor, killing his own family members.
- US officials said the raid was planned for months and lasted two hours.
- Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby said the Pentagon has “strong, strong indications” that civilian deaths in the raid were not caused by US forces.
- However, the Pentagon said it was willing to review the operation.
My colleague Nadeem Badshah is going to take over the blog.
Kirby clarifies, “There has been no decision to do a review or an investigation, right now.”
“We are willing to take a look,” he adds.
However, Kirby adds: “Nobody is taking a victory lap here.”
Islamic State is still a threat, he says.
Asked about the impact of this on the power of Islamic State, Kirby says: “They are leaderless today, and that is a significant blow.”
Note: Qurayshi took over as head of Islamic State just days after his predecessor, al-Baghdadi, blew himself up during a similar US raid in the same area.
The operation was planned for months, Kirby says, but the US had to factor in Qurayshi’s daily schedule, weather and other variables, which is why it happened today.
“We don’t have perfect knowledge of every single person who was killed,” Kirby says.
A reporter is asking if the Kabul airstikes (which killed 10 civilians and no militants) played into the decision to conduct a raid with special forces, not any aerial attack.
Kirby said the decision to go in on foot was in keeping with “a long-standing decision of ours to reduce civilian casulties”.
Kirby says fingerprints and DNA analysis confirmed the deceased as Qurayshi.
Pentagon says willing to review Syria operation after reports of civilian deaths
Department of Defense spokesperson John Kirby has begun a briefing.
He says the Pentagon is willing to review the raid in Syria to make sure US forces did not cause civilians deaths.
Kirby adds the Pentagon has “strong, strong indications” that civilian deaths in the raid were not caused by US forces.
Updated
Some analysis from Jomana Qaddour, at the Atlantic Council:
While the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi is important, the conditions which gave rise to ISIS to exploit conditions in the region are far from gone, as Syrian grievances are not only unaddressed but continue to increase, hunger and poverty rise sharply, and the group’s ideological teachings remain accessible among the population. Sadly, this is not the end of terrorist operations in Syria.
Photo from the site of the attack:
A reminder: the US military’s version of events may be incomplete, and previous initial accounts of other operations have later turned out to be wrong.
Raid was planned for months, lasted two hours - US officials
Before Joe Biden spoke, administration officials gave a briefing on the lead up to the raid and how it played out in the White House situation room.
A senior official said:
This is an operation that has been long in planning and from a tactical perspective, went precisely as expected.
Biden gave the final green light for the operation on Tuesday, but it had been planned for months. After the first intelligence tip gave a lead on Qurayshi’s whereabouts late last year, the president approved a capture or kill operation. The intelligence agencies reached a certainty Qurayshi was at the site in early December and senior officers from the Pentagon brought a tabletop model to the White House to explain the complexity of the operation.
US planners were aware that civilian families had been moved into the first floor of the building, to act as human shields, and one of Qurayshi’s lieutenants with his family were living on the second floor.
From an analysis of the building, US officials were confident that even if Qurayshi blew up the third floor, it would not collapse the whole building. “I doubt he knew that,” one official said.
The strength and integrity of the building was one of the issues discussed at length with Biden before he gave final approval, officials said.
The Islamic State lieutenant and his wife on the second floor of the building exchanged fire with the US soldiers and were both killed. Officials said that some children from the second floor survived. Altogether eight children escaped.
The US special forces were on the ground for two hours. When they were leaving the site, they came under fire from a local IS-affiliated group and returned fire from their helicopters, killing two of their attackers.
Biden watched the operation unfold through a video link from the White House. Officials said there were moments of tension, when one of the helicopters malfunctioned and had to be landed and then destroyed, and then when the special forces team called for family members to come out of the building, knowing there were children inside.
One official described a wave of relief when children and civilian families were able to flee the first floor of the building.
“Obviously that was a key point of concern and why this operation was complex,” the official said.
When the US special forces took off, officials say the president left the Situation Room declaring: “God Bless our troops.” The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, kept him updated through the night.
In his speech, Biden said Qurayshi had been responsible for a massive prison strike last month.
It began when around 100 militants tried to storm the facility in the northern city of Hasakah and free those jailed inside. The raid, led by two suicide bombers, resulted in days of intense clashes, which claimed the lives of close to 40 members of the Syrian Democratic Forces and about 30 militants, and forced more than 50,000 civilians to flee.
The New York Times has quoted to a neighbour who claims US special forces spoke to the occupants of the building where the raid took place over a loudspeaker:
[A] voice rang out in Arabic from a loudspeaker, ordering the occupants of a nearby house to give themselves up.
“Those who want to take part in jihad, come out!” the voice said, according to a close neighbor who gave only his nickname, Abu Omar. “Everyone will be safe if you surrender. Those who remain will die.”
Another neighbour, who gave the name as Abu Muhammad, said he heard heavy banging on the door and opened it to find American commandos and an Arabic-speaking interpreter.
The New York Times reports they were told they would not be harmed, and were directed to flee the house and hide behind another building until the confrontation was over.
Updated
Here is what appears to now be mandatory for every major US operation: a photo op in the situation room.
President Biden, Vice President Harris and members of the President’s national security team observe the counterterrorism operation responsible for removing from the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi — the leader of ISIS. pic.twitter.com/uhK75WeUme
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 3, 2022
Here is an aerial photo of the building:
Another one:
And a photo of the helicopter that malfunctioned, in circumstances that remain unclear. It was quickly destroyed by a circling US fighter jet.
Updated
Biden has now left after very brief remarks.
He took no questions, including one asked by a reporter on the number of civilian casualties.
In his prepared comments, Biden had said the government was still assessing the raid.
Biden says 'horrible terrorist is no more'
“Thanks to the bravery of our forces, this horrible terrorist is no more,” Biden says.
He adds Washington decided on a “a special forces raid, rather than airstrike, to minimise civilian casualties.”
Updated
Biden says Qurayshi blew himself up as special forces approached
Biden said US special forces have “successfully removed a major threat to the world”.
The US president calls Qurayshi, “Haji Abdullah”
He says “he was the driving force between the genocide of the Yazidi people”.
“As troops approached, in a final act of desperate cowardice,” Qurayshi blew himself up the third floor, killing his own family members, Biden said.
Biden has entered the room.
Joe Biden is due to speak at any moment. See empty podium above.
Unicef confirms at least six children killed in town of US raid
Here is the statement from the United Nations children’s fund. It does not reference the raid but the report is from the same town, Atme, and it cites “heavy violence”.
“UNICEF confirms that at least six children were killed and one girl was badly injured overnight in the border town of [Atme] in the northwest of Syria due to heavy violence,” said Bertrand Bainvel, acting UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“According to reports, civilian-populated areas were severely damaged.”
“Since the year began, violence has heavily escalated in and around Idlib in Syria’s northwest, home to 1.2 million children in need of assistance. Many families in the area are internally displaced, having fled violence in other parts of Syria over the years.
“Last year, nearly 70% of grave violations recorded against children in Syria occurred in the northwest.
“This recent increase in violence comes amid freezing weather conditions and record sub-zero temperatures in Syria and the region. At least five Syrian children died in the north of Syria due to harsh winter conditions in the past two weeks alone”.
Here is the US government’s public bio of Qurayshi
They call him Amir Al-Mawla. He has lots of names.
Al-Mawla was a senior terrorist leader in ISIS’s predecessor organization, al-Qa’ida in Iraq, and steadily rose through the ranks to assume the role as the ISIS deputy leader. As one of ISIS’s most senior ideologues, al-Mawla helped drive and justify the abduction, slaughter, and trafficking of the Yazidi religious minority in northwest Iraq and also led some of the group’s global terrorist operations.
Here is a 2020 profile of Qurayshi, written by our Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov:
The key part:
[Qurayshi] ... gave religious rulings that underwrote the genocide against Yazidis and the emptying of the Nieveh Plains in northern Iraq during the height of the Isis rampage.
Also interesting:
In 2004 he was detained by US forces in Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq where he met [Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi. He is believed to have at least one son.
Baghdadi, Qurayshi’s predecessor, was killed in October 2019 in a village 9 miles south of where Thursday’s raid took place.
A note of caution on US claims regarding civilian casualties that we might be hearing about today:
Just last month, the Pentagon released video footage of a US drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, which it initially said killed an Islamic State extremist.
In fact, after news organisations raised doubts, a Pentagon investigation found the 29 August drone strike had killed 10 civilians.
Victims of the strike included Zemari Ahmadi, who worked for a US-based aid organisation, and nine members of his family, including seven children.
The strike was an “honest mistake”, the Pentagon said. It recommended no legal or disciplinary action.
Islamic State leader exploded bomb, killing himself and family, US official claims
Reuters is citing an unnamed US administration official as saying Qurayshi, the target of the raid, exploded a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children.
Medics in Syria say at least 13 people, including 6 children and 4 women, were killed.
Updated
US special forces kill Islamic State leader in Syria
A US special forces raid in north-western Syria killed the top leader of the Islamic State group in the early hours of this morning, Joe Biden has said.
“US military forces in the north-west [of] Syria successfully undertook a counterterrorism operation to protect the American people and our allies, and make the world a safer place,” the US president said in a statement.
“Thanks to the skill and bravery of our armed forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi – the leader of Isis. All Americans have returned safely from the operation.”
Regional and US officials believe that Qurayshi – one of the world’s most wanted men - directed last month’s spectacular assault on a prison holding Islamic State inmates in eastern Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said seven civilians were among the dead, including four children and three women.
Earlier, the Pentagon said special forces had hunted down high-ranking jihadists in an airborne raid, killing 13 people in a “successful” operation.
The overnight operation was thought to be the biggest of its kind by US forces in the jihadist-controlled Idlib region since the 2019 raid that killed the former Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Hello. Oliver Holmes here. I’ll be liveblogging breaking developments today on the US raid in Syria.
