Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was an ISIS leader killed in an overnight raid carried out by U.S. military forces in northwest Syria.
President Biden announced Thursday that al-Qurayshi, the leader of the violent Islamic State group known as ISIS, blew himself up.
ISIS Leader Killed
Biden said, “Last night, operating on my orders, the United States military forces successfully removed a major terrorist threat to the world, the global leader of ISIS,” Biden said in remarks from the Roosevelt Room hours after the White House released his statement on the late-night raid. “Thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is no more.”
Al-Qurayshi took over as head of ISIS in 2019, days after the group’s former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, died during a U.S. raid in the same area.
“Since then, ISIS has directed terrorist operations targeting Americans, our allies and our partners, and countless civilians in the Middle East, Africa and in South Asia,” Biden said.
The president said al-Qurayshi “oversaw the spread of ISIS-affiliated terrorist groups around the world” and was the “driving force” behind the genocide of Yazidis in northwestern Iraq in 2014.
“We all remember the gut-wrenching stories, the mass slaughters that wiped out entire villages,” Biden said. “Thousands of women and young girls sold into slavery; rape used as a weapon of war.”
Biden said that al-Qurayshi died just like al-Baghdadi — by exploding a bomb that killed himself and his family members, including women and children, as U.S. forces approached.
“In a final act of desperate cowardice, with no regard to the lives of his family or others in the building, he chose to blow himself up … taking several members of his family with him — just as his predecessor did,” Biden said.
The president said he had directed the Department of Defense to “take every precaution possible to minimize civilian casualties.”
“Knowing this terrorist had chosen to surround himself with families, including children, we made a choice to pursue a special forces raid, with greater risk to our own people, rather than targeting him with an airstrike,” Biden explained.
No U.S. forces were killed in the raid, he said.
Late last year, the New York Times reported that a U.S. airstrike in Syria in 2019 killed dozens of women and children. In November, the Pentagon ordered a high-level investigation into the strike.
On Thursday, Syria Civil Defense, an aid group known as the White Helmets, said that at least 13 people had been killed during the latest operation, including four women and six children. The group did not provide further details on the identities of those killed
