WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said on Thursday a global “terrorist threat” was removed when the head of the Islamic State group blew himself up after US special forces swooped on his Syrian hideout in an “incredibly challenging” nighttime helicopter raid.
“The United States military forces successfully removed a major terrorist threat to the world, the global leader of ISIS,” Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al Qurashi, Biden said in nationally televised remarks.
The operation dealt the biggest setback to the militant IS organisation since Qurashi’s predecessor, the better-known Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, was killed in a US commando raid in the same Syrian region of Idlib in 2019.
In brief, somber remarks delivered in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, Biden said he ordered an assault by troops, rather than merely bombing the house where the IS leader was located, in order to minimise civilian casualties, even though this meant “ much greater risk to our own people.”
The house contained “families, including children” and “as our troops approached to capture the terrorist, in a final act of desperate cowardice, with no regard to the lives of his own family or others in the building, he chose to blow himself up,” Biden said.
Qurashi did not merely set off a suicide vest to kill himself, but detonated the entire “third floor” of the residence in the town of Atme, Biden said, “taking several members of his family with him.”
An Iraqi from the Turkmen-majority city of Tal Afar, Qurashi was also known as Amir Mohammed Said Abd al Rahman al Mawla. He replaced Baghdadi after his death in a US raid in October 2019, which also ended when Baghdadi blew himself up.
The US government had offered a $10 million reward for information leading to Qurashi, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, said that “13 people at least were killed, among them four children and three women, during the operation.”
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Initial reports that followed the operation near the town of Atme had suggested the target might have been a senior militant close to IS’ rival group Al Qaeda.
AFP correspondents were able to visit the house thought to be where Qurashi blew himself up.
Before the identity of the raid’s target emerged, the owner of the building where Qurashi was staying described his tenant as leading an ordinary life.
“This guy lived here for 11 months. I didn’t see anything suspicious or notice anything,” the landlord, who gave his name only as Abu Ahmad, said.
“He would come and pay the rent and leave. He lived with his three children and his wife. His widowed sister and her daughter were living above them,” he said.
A witness told AFP he woke to the sound of helicopters.
“Then we heard small explosions. Then we heard stronger explosions,” Abu Ali, a displaced Syrian living in Atme said, adding that US forces told residents “not to worry”.
“We’re just coming to this house... to rid you of the terrorists,” the man quoted the US forces as saying in their loudspeaker messages.
The American helicopters took off from a military base in the Kurdish-controlled city of Kobani, Abdel Rahman said. — AFP
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