President Donald Trump announced this Sunday that the leader of the jihadist organization Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, has died during an operation executed on Saturday by the special forces of the US Army in the Syrian town of Barisha, in the province of Idlib, near the border with Turkey.
“Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is dead. He was a sick and depraved man, who died like a coward, on the run and in between sobs,” said the US president. The leader of the Islamic State, Trump has confirmed, died in an underground tunnel with no exit when he was immolated with an explosive belt in the last moments of the assault.
None of the US troops were injured during the operation, which lasted for two hours.
“He will never hurt a woman or a child again. He died like a dog. The world is now a safer place. God bless America,” Trump said.
The president has confirmed that US intelligence had been aware of the whereabouts of Al Baghdadi for about two weeks and that the operation was postponed three times due to the lack of reliability of the information received.
Finally, the assault was executed jointly by between 50 and 70 members of the Delta Force and the Rangers of the United States Army, after establishing their whereabouts without doubts: a residential complex located approximately five kilometers from the border with Turkey.
The operation also involved eight combat helicopters that departed from Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and received “fire from the ground” during their approach to the complex, which “immediately annihilated” before beginning their air control mission.
Once on the ground, the operatives approached the flanks of the complex because “the front door had a trap bomb,” according to Trump, witness of the operation in a private room, where he was accompanied among others by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, the secretary of defense, Mark Esper, and the chiefs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Army.
The US president has confirmed that “a large number of companions” of the terrorist leader have died along with Al Bagdhadi, and that three children have died, as well as two of their wives. Both wore two explosive belts that failed to detonate. The three little ones died at the hands of the terrorist leader, who activated the explosives he carried with him when he was cornered.
