AP – When a helicopter carrying about 50 US commandos hit the ground in Syria an hour after midnight, the attackers encountered extremists and children.
The baby’s comforts were inside—a stuffed bunny, a blue plastic hammock, a crib. So was the stuff of violence – such as the bomb Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi is said to have detonated by US officers who detonated themselves, their families, and perhaps others in their proximity.
It was an audacious raid operating for months in an extremist stronghold in northwestern Syria, and executed with the understanding that children could die as well as hunted IS chiefs if the building’s occupants Don’t give a chance to get out.
The apparent suicide attack occurred on or before Thursday’s two-hour encounter. First responders said 13 people died, six of whom were children. Military officials said no American commandos were injured.
President Joe Biden, who ordered the raid, said the world had gotten rid of a man he described as the driving force behind “the 2014 massacre of the Yazidi people in northwestern Iraq”. When slaughter had wiped out villages, thousands of women and young girls. was sold into slavery, and rape was used as a weapon of war.
“Thanks to the bravery of our soldiers, this dreadful terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said.
President Joe Biden speaks about a counter-terrorism raid by US special forces that killed top Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, February 3, 2022 in northwest Syria killed. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
preparation
During months of planning, US intelligence had to first trace al-Quraishi’s whereabouts and understand his movements – or lack thereof. He concluded that he rarely, except to take a bath on the roof of the building, stepped out of his family’s third-floor quarters.
Anticipating that al-Quraishi might well choose death by self-detonation if besieged by US forces, US officials began an engineering study from afar of the three-story, cinder-block building, to see if As for whether it would fall in that event and kill everyone inside.
He concluded that there was a possibility of a building large enough to survive such an explosion that he did not.
He built a tabletop model of the home and installed it in December in the Situation Room, the ultra-secure White House command and communications post where the president and his national security allies manage crises.
The second floor of the Syrian house, which is also white, was occupied by a low-ranking Islamic State leader and his family. US officials said the ground floor, partly a crypt, was unaware of the presence or significance of families unaffiliated with Islamic State and al-Quraishi.
Biden was first given in-depth information by operational commanders more than a month ago after the US military was satisfied they would find al-Quraishi – also known as Haji Abdullah – where they did.
This image from video provided by the Department of Defense and released on February 3, 2022 shows the compound before a raid where Islamic State group leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi was killed in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province had died. (US Department of Defense via AP)
Islamic State, which once controlled much of the territory in Iraq and parts of Syria, is attempting to regenerate, and has staged its most ambitious campaign in years, when it launched at least one in northeastern Syria last month. At least 3,000 IS prisoners were captured and a prison was confiscated.
For all his animosity with Russia, as it assembles its forces for a possible new invasion of Ukraine, Biden could not afford to take his eyes off IS.
On Tuesday morning, he met Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley in the Oval Office and gave them the green light. On Wednesday evening in Washington, Biden was in the Situation Room, monitoring the live feed of the mission as it unfolded.
Target
At his refugee camp near the raid, Jameel al-Dedo heard the plane and an explosion overnight and first thought it might be the infamous barrel bomb “that was dropped on us.” President Bashar Assad’s army used barrels full of explosives against opponents during the Syrian conflict, causing indiscriminate deaths and injuries.
“The first moments were terrifying,” El-Deddo told the AP. “No one knew what was happening.”
After “opposing” the mission with “various entities” the US launched raids from an undisclosed base in the area. It is jargon to give some other military forces or interests in the region – perhaps Russia – information of a US operation underway.
People inspect a house destroyed after an operation by US forces in the Syrian village of Atmeh in Syria’s Idlib province on February 3, 2022. (Ghaith Alsayed/AP)
Initially, the occupants of the building were asked to leave.
“If you don’t go, we have orders,” an Iraqi-speaking man can be heard saying through the loudspeaker. “We will fire missiles towards the house. There are overhead drones. ,
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said ten people left the building – a man and woman from the first floor and eight children from the first and second floors.
Shortly afterwards there was an explosion that demolished the third story and threw the bodies out of the house, among them al-Quraishi. The head of US Central Command, General Frank McKenzie, said the blast was much larger than a suicide jacket.
US officials said from the second floor, the barricaded IS lieutenant, who was not identified by officials, and a woman believed to be his wife opened fire with commandos. McKenzie said both died in the shootout, US officials said, and a child was found dead with them.
Special operations forces conducting the mission also faced threats from outside the building.
A damaged room and windows are seen inside a house after an operation by US forces in the Syrian village of Atmeh in Idlib province, Syria February 3, 2022. (Ghaith Alsayed/AP)
McKenzie said that while the commandos were clearing the second floor, several foreign fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda in Syria “began to conduct maneuvers with weapons toward the US military”, McKenzie said. He said at least two of them were killed in a shootout from an American helicopter.
McKenzie said another helicopter had a critical fault. After landing it safely, away from the scene, the Americans rigged it to detonate, then struck it with weapons from the air, ensuring that “no sensitive equipment would remain in Syria.”
Video released by the Syrian opposition group Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, shows a paramedic escorting a little girl from home to an ambulance. A picture of a girl later circulated on social media showed a girl, almost five years old, covered in blood on her face.
The second leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi. (courtesy)
When the commandos left safely, Biden said, “God bless our soldiers,” according to a US official, who spoke to the press on condition of anonymity. Biden was held overnight by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in the middle of his long flight out of Syria.
result
In later images, blood can be seen on the walls and floor in the remains of the structure. A ruined bedroom contained a wooden crib and a stuffed rabbit doll. A swing was swinging on a damaged wall.
In the post-war fog, the US had no immediate account of how many children were killed in total and how. The White House blamed the deaths of three children for al-Qureshi’s blast, while the Pentagon talked about two, both left unclear, for now, how many would have been killed in the shelling.
Biden said US forces chose a risky commando raid rather than an air strike to minimize civilian casualties.
Yet the US launched the operation knowing that the IS leader could retaliate by killing himself as well as innocent people around him. McKenzie said the US would investigate “as usual” whether innocent people were killed by its forces.