Inside US raid on ISIS leader: Months of preparation, then a deadly blast
India Today
US special forces carried out a nighttime airborne raid in northwestern Syria during which the head of the Islamic State group blew himself and his family up. Here's how the raids were planned.
US forces rehearsed the helicopter raid over and over, hoping to capture Islamic State's leader on the third floor of a residential building in a Syrian town on the Turkish border, where he was holed up with his family.
But before they could reach him, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi detonated a suicide bomb, triggering a large explosion that blew mangled bodies -- including his own -- out of the building into the streets outside.
President Joe Biden, who monitored the raid from the White House's Situation Room, called Quraishi's suicide a "final act of desperate cowardice." It echoed of the self-detonation of a bomb by his predecessor, Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, during a US raid in 2019 in Syria.
For residents in the town of Atmeh, the events were terrifying, as US forces swept in aboard helicopters before trying to evacuate civilians from the cinder-block building, using loudspeakers to tell them to leave.
"Men, women, and children raise your hands. You are in safety of the American coalition that is surrounding the area. You will die if you don't get out," said one woman recounting the US warnings.
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Marine General Frank McKenzie, who oversees US forces in the region and was providing updates to Biden, said US troops got six civilians, including four children, to leave the first floor of the building before the blast ripped apart the top floor.
