About time Biden had a win.
In a statement on Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that the leader of ISIS died in an overnight raid conducted by U.S. special forces.
The raid, in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, culminated in Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi detonating a bomb that killed himself, his wife, and their two kids as U.S. forces approached the home where he was staying.
Speaking on the matter, Biden revealed that as U.S. “troops approached to capture the terrorist, in a final act of desperate cowardice, with no regard to the lives of his own family or others the building, he chose to blow himself up.”
Lauding the operation for taking “a major terrorist threat off the battlefield” and sending a “strong message to terrorists around the world: we will come after you and find you.”
The President also added that the raid was part of an “unceasing effort to keep the American people safe and strengthen the security of our allies and partners around the world.”
The raid follows months-long attempts by ISIS to resurge in the region, recently committing a series of attacks in Syria, including an attempt to seize a northeast Syria prison that held 3,000 detainees, the group’s boldest move in recent years.
In a Press Briefing on Thursday (February 3), Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby revealed that U.S. forces had safely evacuated ten people, eight of which were children, adding that the U.S. positively identified al-Qurayshi through DNA and fingerprint analysis.
Biden had ordered U.S. forces to “take every precaution available to minimize civilian casualties,” which required the special forces to land their helicopters instead of carrying out an airstrike.
In the brief statement, Kirby also said, “The mission was successful,” adding that “There were no U.S. casualties.”
Following many setbacks that have led to allies and opponents presuming that the U.S.’s global power was weakening, this operation was a military victory for Biden.
Biden also thanked troops for their bravery, revealing that al-Qurayshi was responsible for the prison strike and a 2014 genocide in Iraq against the Yazidi people.
