BEIRUT – President Joe Biden said Thursday that a U.S. Special Operations forces counterterrorism mission overnight in northwestern Syria had killed the leader of the Islamic State militant group.
Thirteen people were killed during the raid, including children, local first responders said. No U.S. casualties were reported in the operation, which left a U.S. helicopter destroyed on the ground.
In a statement Thursday, Biden said: “Last night at my direction, U.S. military forces in northwest Syria successfully undertook a counterterrorism operation to protect the American people and our Allies, and make the world a safer place. Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi – the leader of ISIS. All Americans have returned safely from the operation.”
Biden said he would deliver remarks to the American people on Thursday morning.
The operation occurred amid growing concern over the resurgence of the Islamic State, which recently overran a prison in northeastern Syria. Thursday marked the second time a U.S. operation targeted a head of the extremist group in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province. In late 2019, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s former leader, died during a raid on Baghdadi’s military compound after detonating an explosive vest.
Residents in the area Thursday described a thunderous, early morning assault involving multiple helicopters and heavy machine gun fire.
The White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense group that works in parts of the country not controlled by the government, said they have recovered 13 bodies so far, including those of six children and four women, from a house that appeared to be the target of the operation. They also said they treated a nearby resident and a young girl who lived in the house, whose entire family they said was killed. UNICEF, in a statement, confirmed that six children were killed.
Two U.S. officials with knowledge of the situation said that the civilian casualties were caused by a “terrorist” in the targeted compound who detonated explosives. One of the officials said the explosion killed the man and “and members of his own family, including women and children.”
An American helicopter experienced a mechanical malfunction, prompting U.S. troops to blow it up in place before they flew away on other aircraft, one of the officials said. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The mechanical malfunction and detonation in place of the helicopter had similarities to at least two other complex U.S. raids. A helicopter was destroyed by U.S. troops after a crash landing in the 2011 raid on Abbottobad, Pakistan, in which Navy SEALs killed al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, and an MV-22 Osprey was detonated by U.S. Special Operations troops in a 2017 raid in Yemen after a “hard landing.” The latter operation, at the outset of the Trump administration, included the death of Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Ryan Owens.
Residents in the northern Idlib province said they heard helicopters about 1 a.m. local time, and later, what they described as the sound of heavy “clashes.”
A spokesman for the White Helmets said the group “cannot determine whether there were bodies that were retrieved by U.S. forces because there is blood everywhere.” It was not immediately clear what had caused the casualties. The White Helmets, as well as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said there were exchanges of fire during the confrontation at the house.
Ahmed, a resident who said he lives less than two miles from the scene and who spoke on the condition that he be identified by only his first name due to safety concerns, said in a telephone interview that he heard helicopters as he was preparing to go to sleep at around 1 a.m.
The sound was not unfamiliar in the area – helicopters often arrived to switch out Turkish troops stationed nearby, he said. But this was different.
“The sound was horrible,” he said. He went to his roof, he said, and saw machine gun fire emanating from one of the helicopters. The gunfire and the sounds from the helicopters subsided around 4 a.m., he said.
Residents said the raid targeted a two-story house about a mile from the Turkish border, in an area that appeared to be surrounded by olive groves. The White Helmets said its first responders initially could not access the area because of the heavy “shelling and clashes” that preceded the U.S. operation. Helicopters left shortly after 3 a.m. local time, the group said in a statement.
Videos circulating on social media, which The Washington Post was not able to immediately verify, captured what appeared to be the raid and its aftermath. In one widely circulated video, the sound of heavy gunfire can be heard, as what appear to be muzzle flashes, possibly from a helicopter, are seen above the skyline. Other videos captured the sound of someone speaking in Arabic over a loudspeaker, telling children in the house to come out.
“The area is surrounded by land and air,” the person can be heard saying. “The children are without blame. If there are children, they should come to me.”
Mahmoud al-Sheikh, who works at an auto repair shop less than a mile from the house, said he did not know who lived there but often used to see “small children and women coming in and out.” There was nothing terribly extraordinary about the men in the house, he added, saying they did not outwardly match the description of hard-line Islamist fighters who often wore long beards.
At one point during the events, he heard someone saying, “Children and women leave, we are entering the house.”
Photographs purportedly showing the house, taken by a local journalist early Thursday, showed a section of the top floor partially collapsed, and damage to walls that had left rebar exposed. Pictures of the interior showed a sitting room in disarray, and other areas where blood and scattered debris were visible.
Idlib, a hilly, rural province in northwestern Syria, has been a bastion of opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad for more than a decade. The province is home to millions of internally displaced people from other parts of Syria. Its cities, towns and villages are largely under the control of an Islamist militant group that was formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which is regarded as a terrorist group by the United States and other western powers.
HTS, which has recently tried to emphasize its credentials as a governing body, has waged a war against another militant group in Idlib called Hurras al-Din, which is currently affiliated with Al-Qaida. There has been some overlap between the two groups: disaffected, hard-line HTS members in recent years have defected and joined Hurras al-Din.
There was no immediate indication Thursday that the U.S. raid had targeted HTS. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement Thursday that an HTS member had been unintentionally killed during the U.S. operation as a result of the armed clashes.
(c) 2022, The Washington Post · Sarah Dadouch, Kareem Fahim and Dan Lamothe
{Matzav.com}
Remember when the Trump administration assassinated Qasem Soleimani the 2nd most powerful leader of Iran, plus a few other recognized terrorists with him. No women nor children hurt. And how the lamestream media reacted and attacked him for it!
Such ridiculous double standards!
Both sides have to tone down the inflammatory rhetoric. America must give away land to the Muslim freedom fighters, perhaps Washington.