U.S. President Donald Trump makes a statement at the White House following reports that U.S. forces attacked Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in northern Syria, in Washington, U.S., October 27, 2019. Photo: Reuters
WASHINGTON,— U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that fugitive Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died in a raid by U.S. special forces in northwest Syria, in a major blow to the jihadist group.
Baghdadi killed himself during the raid by igniting a suicide vest, Trump said in a televised address from the White House. Test results from the aftermath of the raid had positively identified Baghdadi, he said.
“He was a sick and depraved man and now he’s gone,” Trump said.
Test results from the aftermath of the raid had positively identified Baghdadi, he said.
“He was a sick and depraved man and now he’s gone,” Trump said.
Trump said “many” of Baghdadi’s people were killed, and added that in killing himself, Baghdadi also killed three children.
U.S. forces suffered no personnel losses, he said. He also thanked Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq for their support.
Baghdadi had long been sought by the United States, as head of a jihadist group that at one point controlled large areas of Syria and Iraq, declaring a caliphate. The group has carried out atrocities against religious minorities and attacks on five continents in the name of a version of an ultra-fanatic Islam that horrified mainstream Muslims.
In recent years the group had lost most of its territory. But while the destruction of the quasi-state that Baghdadi built has denied the group its recruiting tool and logistical base from which it could train fighters and plan coordinated attacks overseas, most security experts believe Islamic State remains a threat through clandestine operations or attacks.
Syria’s top Kurdish commander on Sunday hailed a “successful” and “historic operation” and joint intelligence work following US media reports that Islamic State jihadist supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed.
General Mazloum Abdi Kobani, head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the autonomous Kurdish administration’s de facto army, that was the US’s main local ally in years of battles against the Islamic State group in Syria, said the operation was the result of “joint intelligence work“.
The SDF has been working for five months as part of a joint operation to eliminate Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, General Kobani said on Sunday.
Trump had faced withering criticism from fellow Republicans and Democrats for announcing a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) in northeastern Syria earlier this month, which permitted Turkey to attack America’s Kurdish allies as it sought to set up a “safe zone”.
Many critics of the pullout have expressed concern both at the abandoning of the Kurdish forces who had been instrumental in defeating Islamic State in Syria, and that the move might allow the group to regain strength and pose a threat to U.S. interests.
The US pullout has largely been seen as a betrayal of Syria’s Kurds.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
Syria’s Kurds have detained thousands of local and foreign fighters suspected of fighting for Islamic State, as well as thousands of related women and children.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.
Syria’s Kurds have established a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Syria during the country’s eight-year war.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
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