WASHINGTON, DC: President Joe Biden said Thursday that the leader of the Islamic State group had been “taken off the battlefield” during a raid by US forces in Syria.
“Last night at my direction, US 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,” Biden said in a statement.
“Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi — the leader of ISIS,” Biden added, using another acronym for IS.
A senior US official said Qurashi had blown himself up during a nighttime airborne raid by US special forces in northwestern Syria.
The bomb Qurashi detonated also killed members of his own family, including women and children, the official said.
Biden, who was due to make public remarks early Thursday on the raid, added that no US servicemen were wounded during the operation.
The operation, in which Kurdish forces also took part, was conducted in the Idlib region where Qurashi’s better-known predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a similar raid in 2019.
Qurashi, who was also known as Amir Mohammed Said Abd al-Rahman al-Mawla, replaced Baghdadi after his death in a US raid in October 2019.
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