Washington — Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ruthless leader of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) who once controlled a vast swath of territory and tens of thousands of jihadist fighters, died in a raid by U.S. troops in northern Syria, bringing a dramatic end to a years-long U.S.-led hunt that President Trump labeled as his top national security priority.
Addressing the nation on Sunday morning, the president said a team of U.S. special forces targeted al-Baghdadi in a “dangerous and daring” overnight raid in northeastern Syria. During the operation, the ISIS leader was “crying and screaming” and attempted to flee through a network of underground tunnels, the president said. As U.S. forces and dogs approached him, al-Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and a group of children who he brought with him, according to Mr. Trump.
“He died like a dog. He died like a coward,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he watched much of the raid in real time from the White House Situation Room.
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Mr. Trump said test results confirmed the identity of ISIS leader’s body, which he noted had been mutilated by the blast. During the operation, the president added, U.S. forces killed a “large number” of ISIS militants and collected intelligence from the terrorist group. No U.S. service members were killed.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) said the raid took place at a compound at about 12:30 a.m. local time to the west of the town of Barisha, a mountainous area about 25 miles west of Aleppo overlooking the Turkish border. The group said the area is a hotbed of activity for an al Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
SOHR said eight U.S. gunships and a fighter jet fired on targets in the area for about two hours, with messages blasted over loudspeakers in Arabic urging those in the compound to surrender. The group said nine people were killed, including two women and a child. Eyewitnesses told the group that two people were alive when the operation was over and were taken away on U.S. helicopters.
The Syrian Defense Forces (SDF), the Kurdish group that has fought alongside U.S. forces against ISIS, hailed the operation on Sunday.
“Successful & historical operation due to a joint intelligence work with the United States of America,” said General Mazloum Abdi, the SDF commander.
Iraqi and Turkish officials said both countries had shared intelligence with the U.S. prior to the raid.
Al-Baghdadi, who has rarely been seen in public, appeared in a video in April for the first time in five years. The video, released by ISIS’ media network, showed al-Baghdadi with a bushy grey and red beard and seated with a machine gun next to him. That was his first video appearance since 2014, when he delivered a sermon at the al-Nuri mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
In December 2016, the U.S. State Department raised its reward to $25 million for information on al-Baghdadi, making him one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.
Al-Baghdadi’s death comes just days after the U.S. announced it would be sending additional troops into Syria to protect oil fields from ISIS.
Thursday’s announcement was a reversal of Mr. Trump’s earlier decision to pull U.S. forces from the area, which sparked a Turkish cross-border offensive earlier this month, and raised concerns that ISIS could regain strength. The Kurdish SDF in northern Syria had been the main U.S. ally in the fight against ISIS.
Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria was criticized by Republican and Democratic leaders.
Al-Baghdadi was born in 1971 and claimed to have been descended from the Prophet Muhammad. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2004, al-Baghdadi was detained in a prison camp that became an incubator for jihadis.
Released a year later, he joined al Qaeda’s offshoot in Iraq, rising to become its leader, before moving into the chaos of Syria’s civil war and renaming his group ISIS.
At its peak, ISIS ruled over an estimated 10 million people in Iraq and Syria, enslaving women, performing public executions and expanding into Europe and the U.S.
Margaret Brennan, David Martin, Caroline Linton, Camilo Montoya-Galvez and Holly Williams contributed to this report.
