ISIS leader killed in special ops raid in Syria
ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed in a "successful" U.S. Special Operations counterterrorism mission in northwest Syria Thursday, President Biden and the Pentagon said.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said there were no U.S. casualties. Al-Qurayshi was wearing a suicide vest that detonated during the raid, sources told Fox News.
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Human rights groups and witnesses described a large operation by U.S. commandos that seemed to have the intensity and planning of a raid on a high-value target. Social media users posted a purported video of the attack in the nighttime hours. A helicopter was only visible when it opened fire.
Residents in Atmeh, a village in rebel-held Idlib Province, told the Associated Press that there was a large ground assault, with U.S. forces using loudspeakers asking women and children to leave the area. They described the raid as the biggest operation since the October 2019 killing of Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The area, which is near the Turkish border, is home to several top al Qaeda operatives and other militant groups still fighting President Bashar al-Assad. The Pentagon referred Fox News to an earlier statement.
There was at least one major explosion. U.S. officials told Fox News that one of the helicopters in the raid suffered a maintenance issue and had to be blown up on the ground.
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The suicide vest detonation caused some civilian casualties, but the number of civilian deaths reported on the ground do "not correspond with what US officials say occurred on the ground last night," two U.S. officials told Fox News.
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The number of US commandos was not given nor the branch of the service they are from. It is not clear from whence the commandos came. The US does have forces in parts of Syria and Iraq.
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