‘We are still shocked’: the Syrians who discovered Islamic State’s leader was their neighbour

Pentagon surveillance footage of IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi Al-Qurayshi’s safehouse in Syria before the US raid that led to his death. Photograph: EyePress News/Rex/Shutterstock

For many months, the man on the motorbike would come and go from the house and a mechanic’s workshop in the Syrian border town of Atme.

No other adult in the three-story building ever seemed to emerge, least of all a second man who signed a lease last spring and moved in with two women and three young children, never to be seen publicly again until the early hours of Thursday.