ISIS Leader Killed by U.S. Forces in Syria, Biden Says

U.S. military forces in northwest Syria carried out a counterterrorism operation that killed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of Islamic State, President Biden said.

He said he will deliver remarks on the operation later Thursday morning.

“Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi—the leader of ISIS. All Americans have returned safely from the operation,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.

The announcement came after officials and social media accounts said U.S. special operations forces carried out a combat operation to kill or capture an unidentified high-level terrorist in northwest Syria along the Turkish border, in a mission that included Apache gunships, airstrikes and drones.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement issued early Thursday that “the mission was successful. There were no U.S. casualties.”

The special forces, in conjunction with other troops, raided a site in the Atmeh area in Syria’s Idlib province for more than two hours, reportedly resulting in multiple deaths and the destruction of some structures, according to witness accounts filtered through social media. U.S. troops exchanged fire with enemy forces on the ground, according to those social-media reports.

At least 13 people were killed, including six children and four women, as a result of bombings and clashes in connection with the U.S. raid, Syrian civil-defense group the White Helmets said on its Facebook page. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the people were killed during the raid or after.

“We were woken up at 1 a.m. by the sound of war planes and helicopters,” said Adnan Abo Mohammad, who lives not far from the site of the attack. “They were flying very low to the ground. Clashes went on till about 3 a.m.”

The reported site of the raid, a building, is about 15 miles from the Syrian village of Barisha where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in October 2019 during a U.S.-led raid.

Thursday’s operation was in the planning stages for at least the past several days, U.S. officials said. Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in the Middle East, was expected to appear in person at a conference in Washington on Thursday. The organization changed his participation earlier this week to virtual remarks, so he could remain at Central Command’s headquarters in Tampa, Fla., according to people familiar with the matter. By late Wednesday, the general’s staff had pulled him out of the conference altogether, according to officials with the Middle East Institute think tank, where he was expected to appear.

Charles Lister, a Syria specialist at the Middle East Institute, said that based on conversations he had with individuals in the area and videos posted on social media the raid began about 1 a.m. local time when two or three helicopters landed in the Atmeh area—where there are several camps for internally displaced people—and surrounded a residential building. Using a loudspeaker, U.S. troops demanded that women and children vacate the building, he said.

The target of the raid would have to be a significant individual or individuals given the firepower that U.S. forces brought to the fight and the risks involved, he said.

The area of northwest Syria where the raid took place is nominally under the control of Turkey, but the de facto power is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist group and former al Qaeda affiliate that is now hostile to both al Qaeda and its rival, Islamic State. Al Qaeda has accused the jihadist group of helping facilitate U.S. drone strikes against its personnel, Mr. Lister said.

Experts said it is hard for the U.S. to ignore the region, given the groups that operate there.

“It is part of Syria in which extremist groups are mixed in with other elements of the opposition,” said Andrew Tabler, a former State Department official who is now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, referring to the Syrian opposition. “It shows that no matter how much Syria is out of the headlines, the problems remain the same.”

The Atmeh area, Mr. Tabler said, includes a military base that had been used in the past by the Free Syrian Army and other groups opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has rough terrain and is adjacent to the Turkish border.

The raid and reports of civilian casualties come less than a week after the Pentagon issued revised rules meant to reduce the number of innocent people killed when the U.S. military carries out such operations.

Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a new directive designed to limit civilian casualties as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the military’s policies and practices.

The U.S. military has come under increased scrutiny in recent months for not doing more to avoid killing civilians during operations. Last year, the Pentagon was forced to admit that an airstrike it carried out on a car in Kabul was a “tragic mistake” that killed 10 people, including seven children. But the Pentagon took no disciplinary action against the military officials involved in the errant attack, which the U.S. military initially defended as a “righteous” strike that killed people preparing to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“We can and will improve upon efforts to protect civilians,” Mr. Austin wrote in the directive issued last week. “The protection of innocent civilians in the conduct of our operations remains vital to the ultimate success of our operations, and as a significant strategic and moral imperative.”