President Joe Biden said on Thursday that the ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi blew himself up as US forces entered his compound.
There were no US casualties.
The US is performing continuous raids to neutralize ISIS and al-Qaeda attacks in Syria. This was the biggest raid since the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS’s previous leader, back in October 2019. Wednesday’s raid came after an apparent ISIS attack in a Syrian prison.
Biden administration officials stated that Quarashi replaced Baghdadi in 2019. Quarashi was responsible for the deaths of American marines in Afghan last year and the Yazidi ethnic minority’s genocide; making him an apparent choice to succeed Abu Bakr-al-Baghdadi.
The Pentagon explained that they went for a land strike over an airstrike to reduce civilian casualties. Special forces conducted the raid after Biden’s approval who monitored the raid in real-time from the White House Situation Room.
The task force faced resistance and were engaged in combat for two hours before Quarashi detonated a suicide bomb.
The blast killed Quarashi, his wife, his 2 children, and two more unnamed ISIS deputies. Fingerprints and DNA samples have confirmed their identities. The crossfire led to a few civilian and Syrian combatants deaths, the US and Syrian defense groups are disputing over the numbers presently.
