ISIS leader detonated explosive in deadly U.S. military raid in Syria, Biden says

The leader of the jihadist group ISIS and several others were killed as a result of an American military raid in northwest Syria, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday.

Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed in the operation. Rescue workers said at least 13 people also died, including women and children, but neither Biden nor the Pentagon confirmed a death toll.

"Last night's operation took a major terrorist leader off the battlefield, and it sends a strong message to terrorists around the world — we will come after you and find you," Biden said in brief remarks from the White House.

Qurayshi succeeded Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who led ISIS when it took over swaths of Syria and Iraq, ruling over millions of people at the height of its self-declared caliphate.

Baghdadi was killed in October 2019 by U.S. troops — also in a raid in north Syria — after ISIS fighters were defeated on the battlefield. The group is now waging insurgent attacks in Iraq and Syria.

Biden said even after the leadership transition, ISIS has been "targeting Americans, our allies, our partners and countless civilians in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia."

At a later briefing, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters that the U.S. led an evacuation of 10 people, including children, from the raid area. U.S. forces also engaged in a firefight with one of Qurayshi's lieutenants and the lieutenant's wife.

WATCH | Civilians killed in U.S. raid on ISIS leader: 

U.S. criticized for civilian deaths after ISIS leader dies in raid

3 years ago

Duration 2:01

WARNING: Video contains graphic footage | The U.S. is being criticized for the deaths of civilians, including three children, during a raid in Syria to capture the head of ISIS, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who killed himself during the raid.

Both the lieutenant and his wife were killed, Kirby said, "and it appears as if a child was also killed" in the area.

He added that the United States was willing to review the operation.

Syrian rescue workers said at least 13 people, including six children and four women, were killed by clashes and explosions that erupted after the raid began, targeting a house in the Atmeh area near the Turkish border.

Residents said helicopters landed and heavy gunfire and explosions were heard during the raid that began around midnight.

U.S. concedes civilians may have been killed

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-Qaeda's second in command, former Osama bin Laden aide Abu al-Kheir al-Masri, in Syria in 2017.

U.S. military procedures to guard against civilian casualties are currently under scrutiny, however, following a high-profile mistaken drone strike in Afghanistan that the Pentagon initially hailed a success.

Biden said in this instance, he directed military leadership to "take every precaution possible to minimize civilian casualties," and that the decision was ultimately made to proceed with a special forces raid instead of an airstrike.

Referring to him by one of his pseudonyms, Hajji Abdullah, the U.S. president claimed the ISIS leader had killed several of the casualties by detonating an explosive "in a final act of desperate cowardice."

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the operation was designed and conducted in a manner to minimize civilian casualties.

"But, given the complexity of this mission, we will take a look at the possibility our actions may also have resulted in harm to innocent people," Austin said.

A number of jihadist groups with links to al-Qaeda operate in northwestern Syria, the last major bastion of rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad in the decade-long Syrian war. Leaders of ISIS have also hidden out in the area.

Last month, it carried out its biggest military operation since it was defeated and its members scattered underground in 2019: an attack on a prison in northeast Syria holding at least 3,000 ISIS detainees.

Biden characterized Qurayshi as being responsible for the prison attack, which appeared aimed at breaking free senior ISIS 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 carried out airstrikes and deployed American personnel in Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the prison area to help the Kurdish forces.

A senior Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) official, Nowruz Ahmad, said Monday that the prison assault was part of a broader plot that ISIS had been preparing for a long time, including attacks on other neighbourhoods in Kurdish-run northeastern Syria and on the al-Hol camp in the south, which houses thousands of families of ISIS members.

U.S. forces have for years used drones to target jihadists in the area, but Thursday's operation appeared to be the largest by U.S. forces in the northwest since the raid that killed Baghdadi, Charles Lister, senior fellow with the Washington-based Middle East Institute, told Reuters.

A destroyed U.S. helicopter was seen in the aftermath of the operation.

Qurayshi was born in 1976 in Muhallabiya, a small town inhabited mostly by Iraq's Turkmen minority to the west of Mosul. Qurayshi had joined the jihadist insurgency against the U.S. occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2004, and eventually worked his way up the ISIS ranks, according to Feras Kilani, a BBC correspondent who interviewed Qurayshi and carried out an investigation into the group's leadership after Baghdadi.