NEWS: Syria POOR DESTINY FOR A FAMILY
One of the leaders of the Islamic State blows himself up with his entire family during a raid.

Thir­teen peo­ple are believed to have died, includ­ing six chil­dren and four women, in the dar­ing raid which involved 24 elite spe­cial oper­a­tions backed by fight­er jets and heli­copter gun­ships on Thursday.

Abu Ibrahim al-Hashi­mi al-Qurayshi det­o­nat­ed a bomb that killed him and mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, the White House says

13 peo­ple, includ­ing six chil­dren and four women, are believed to be among the dead­Cred­it: Reuters
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashi­mi al-Qurayshi det­o­nat­ed a bomb that killed him and mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, the White House said.

Thir­teen peo­ple are believed to have died, includ­ing six chil­dren and four women, in the dar­ing raid which involved 24 elite spe­cial oper­a­tions backed by fight­er jets and heli­copter gun­ships on Thursday.

“At the start of the oper­a­tion, the ter­ror­ist tar­get det­o­nat­ed a bomb which killed him and mem­bers of his own fam­i­ly, includ­ing women and chil­dren,” a senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial told Reuters.

US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has con­firmed that al-Qurayshi — who had a $10million boun­ty on his head — was “removed from the bat­tle­field” dur­ing the night operation.

In a state­ment, the pres­i­dent said: “Last night, under 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 removed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashi­mi al-Qurayshi, the leader of the Islam­ic State, from the bat­tle­field. All Amer­i­cans returned safe and sound from the operation .

“May God pro­tect our troops.”

US troops were report­ed­ly deployed by heli­copter in the mid­dle of the night and sur­round­ed Al-Qurashi’s house and ordered the women and chil­dren to evacuate.

Heli­copters then deployed their ammu­ni­tion after the ground assault, with sev­er­al strikes dec­i­mat­ing large parts of the house.

Al-Qurashi became the leader of the Islam­ic State after for­mer leader Abu Bakr al-Bagh­da­di was killed in a sim­i­lar raid by US forces in 2019 in the near­by town of Barisha.

Al-Qurashi, also known as Amir Muham­mad Sa’id Abdal-Rah­man al-Mawla, among oth­er alias­es, was a senior ter­ror­ist oper­a­tive in the Islam­ic State’s pre­de­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tion, Al-Qae­da in Iraq, and steadi­ly rose through the ranks to become Deputy Chief, accord­ing to Rewards for Justice.

He led the cam­paign to kid­nap, rape and mas­sacre thou­sands of Yazidis in north­west­ern Iraq and has been on the US State Depart­men­t’s most want­ed list since March 2020.

The oper­a­tion — which locals say last­ed more than two hours — took place in Atmeh, a vil­lage near the bor­der with Turkey.