Isis leader killed - latest news: Biden says Qurayshi killing is warning to terrorists

President Joe Biden said on Thursday that the decision to send in special forces instead of conducting an airstrike had been an effort to minimize civilian casualties.

He said that Isis leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was behind numerous horrific acts.

“Thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” Mr Biden said in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

He added that he “made a choice to pursue a Special Forces raid at a much greater risk to our own people” rather than destroying the entire building with a missile.

A similar judgement was made in the operation that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

According to The New York Times, Mr Biden, who was serving as vice president at the time, was against using special forces at that point because he viewed the mission as too risky for US troops.

“This operation is testament to America’s reach and capability to take out terrorist threats no matter where they try to hide anywhere in the world,” Mr Biden added on Thursday.

President Joe Biden’s speech on Thursday came after an operation that was the endpoint of a mission that began late last year when US intelligence indicated that al-Qurayshi was living in northwest Syria, close to the border with Turkey.

Following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, some in the US government worried that ISIS would regain control of territory.

CIA Director William Burns told Congress that US intelligence operations against ISIS could be harmed.

But as the US looked for al-Qurayshi, the Afghanistan withdrawal didn’t appear to pose any problems, with intelligence officers finding him in late 2021 after following a number of couriers, The New York Times reported.

The US was able to evaluate the building in which he was living and discovered that the family who lived downstairs were unaware that he was running a global terror network. A plan to take him out was then formed, focusing on limiting civilian casualties.

US officials have blamed al-Qurayshi, who detonated an explosive device before he could be eliminated by US forces, for at least some of the 13 deaths that have been reported.

It began shortly after midnight. Residents of the Syrian town of Atmeh, just across the border from Turkey, were awoken by the deafening buzz of helicopters close above them. The aircraft were carrying a team of US commandos, who disembarked and surrounded a residential building. Through loudspeakers, the soldiers called in Arabic for the people inside to surrender.

Terrified and alone with her mother and sister, local resident Sima, 22 (not her real name) said they moved away from the windows as a precaution.

“We heard a voice from loudspeakers saying the woman and children should get out of the house that was being targeted. But we didn’t know which house was the target,” she told The Independent.

Thousands of miles away, in the White House situation room, US president Joe Biden, vice president Kamala Harris and top generals followed the operation closely. The raid to kill Isis leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi had been months in the planning. Mr Biden had given the final order for the raid on Tuesday.

But just as soon as it began, the world’s most-wanted militant leader carried out the task himself, detonating a bomb that killed himself and his family. The blast threw bodies onto the street below, according to witnesses.

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The US military had been watching the house where al-Qurayshi was killed for months. Atmeh is controlled by Syrian opposition forces dominated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly the Nusra Front, which was formerly linked to Al Qaeda. The former Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a US-led operation just 10 miles from Atmeh in October 2019.

Officials said they knew Qurayshi had lived there with a lieutenant, that couriers came in and out of the building, and that he was still directly overseeing Isis activities across Iraq and Syria. A little over 10 days ago, Isis fighters launched a brazen attack on a prison in northeast Syria in an attempt to free its comrades. The 20 January attack lasted for 10 days and saw dozens of Isis fighters engage with US forces and allies the Syrian Democratic Forces. It was the largest Isis attack since the collapse of the group’s caliphate nearly three years ago and sparked warnings of a resurgence.