Shortly before President Joe Biden spoke Thursday about the raid that killed the Islamic State leader, senior management officials gave the main points, scenes of their involvement and more about the White House’s account of how the attack unfolded.
Biden’s participation
According to officials, the operation took months to plan. Once the U. S. While the U. S. navy showed the whereabouts of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, his nom de guerre, or Hajjii Abdallah, as management began calling him instead, Biden reported on the proposed operation. in December.
It has been kept informed, adding a report earlier this week. He gave the official green light for the operation to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the General Staff Mark Milley in the Oval Office Tuesday morning.
Biden oversaw the operation in real time in the room Wednesday night, receiving reports from Austin, Milley and the commander of U. S. Central Command. UU. , el general Kenneth McKenzie.
Officials described a high tension in the room as the raid was underway, and a sigh of relief when the first reports of civilians evacuated for protection arrived.
Biden is very immersed in operational details, the officials said.
They gave credit to Syrian forces for their intelligence assistance.
“We are especially grateful to our local partner, the Syrian Democratic Forces, whose roles have been instrumental to the good fortune of the mission, and we will continue to relentlessly pursue the remnants of ISIS and its leadership. “
Raid Details
The raid lasted only about two hours and was complicated because al-Qurayshi gave the impression that he was intentionally living in a residential building with families on the first floor, who were unaware that the terrorist leader lived on the third floor.
“He commanded through messengers who came and went, those other innocent people as a shield,” a senior management official said.
The threat of harming the unwitting circle of relatives and other civilians in the domain led Biden to order the airstrike rather than a drone strike, endangering U. S. troops to minimize threats to others, the official said.
In the early stages of the operation, a woguy, a boy and several young men living on the first plot of construction were safely removed from the site.
Unfortunately, al-Qurayshi eventually detonated an explosion, killing himself and several others, adding his wife and children. Officials said it was the same terrorist tactic as his predecessor, al-Baghdadi, to commit suicide and his own circle of relatives to face justice or fight alone.
In this case, the explosion was so large on the third floor that it threw bodies out of space and into the surrounding area.
All the casualties, he said, were due to the al-Qurayshi explosion.
In addition, an ISIS lieutenant, who helped him carry out daily operations, making sure that al-Qurayshi never had to leave the building, lived on the building grounds. This ISIS aide barricaded himself and members of his own circle of relatives on the ground at the time. He and his wife participated in the strike force and were killed in the operation. It is not known if this couple had children in the room with them, which is one of the reasons why the government will not give exact details. figures on victims.
Informants were continually under pressure that “intense care” had been taken with civilian casualties, adding special operations forces calling or declaring their presence, asking others to abandon construction before continuing the raid.
With this, the search force took a series of measures, adding compliance calls, thus pronouncing its presence asking other people to leave the building, resulting in the departure of some innocent people, as already reported.
A helicopter had a mechanical failure. Authorities said it “was very well discarded at some distance from the site” and that the provision “had nothing to do with any hostile action. “The helicopter was able to leave the target domain and land. somewhere else, where the resolution was made to destroy it.
When U. S. forces withdrew from the area, there was another attack through local hostile forces. the forces responded, killing at least two enemies in action.
There were no casualties on the U. S. side. The culprits did not give the exact number of civilian casualties. “Some of the numbers don’t fit our information,” one official said, but they still declined to specify a figure.
“Here everything went smoothly and as planned when we were in the crisis room during the two hours of floor operation as planned,” one official said, despite the incident with the helicopter.
Impact on ISIS
The slain ISIS leader was a driving force behind the genocide of the devout Yazidi minority in northwestern Iraq in 2014, and the enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women who used rape as a weapon of war. “
“He oversaw ISIS activities in Iraq and Syria, which sought to reconstitute themselves under his leadership. The global is the global as a safer position with your departure,” one official said.
Officials believed the attack would deal a blow to ISIS.
“We anticipate that this will lead to disruption within ISIS. It’s one of the few remnants, it deserves to be called legacy leaders,” a senior management official said.
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