Seconds Of ISIS Leader's Hideout Attack: Women And Children Asked To Get Out, Quraishi Is On The Third Floor

JAKARTA - United States troops practiced helicopter strikes repeatedly, hoping to capture the ISIS leader on the third floor of a residential building in a Syrian town on the Turkish border, where he is hiding with his family.

Operational planning began in early December, when officials became convinced the ISIS leader was living in the building, officials said. President Biden received a detailed briefing on options for capturing Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi alive on December 20, a senior White House official said.

President Biden gave final approval for the mission Tuesday during an Oval Office meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a top American military officer, US officials said.

For residents in the city of Atmeh, the event was terrifying, as US troops swept through helicopters before trying to evacuate civilians from the cinder block building, using loudspeakers to tell them to leave.

"Men, women, and children raise your hands. You are safe from the American coalition surrounding the area. You will die if you don't come out," said a woman who recounted the US warning, citing Reuters on February 3.

An official said the operation was complicated by the fact Quraishi rarely left his residence on the third floor of the building and relied on couriers to interact with the outside world.

The number of children seen in the area and the families believed to be living on the first floor led US officials to try to create missions aimed at protecting civilians, they said.

That ultimately puts U.S. forces in jeopardy in attack, instead of launching long-range attacks, officials said.

Along with Vice President Kamala Harris and other administration officials, President Biden received real-time updates from Austin, Milley, and McKenzie as they watched the operation unfold on multiple screens from the Situation Room of the White House in Washington DC, United States, officials said.

President Biden joined the group in the Situation Room around 5 p.m. on Wednesday, after completing a call with French President Emmanuel Macron on an unrelated topic, White House officials said.

Marine General Frank McKenzie, who oversees US troops in the region and provides updates to President Biden, said US forces ordered six civilians, including four children, to leave the first floor of the building before the explosion destroyed the upper floors.

As the US troops advanced to the second floor, one of Quraishi's lieutenants and his wife started shooting at the American soldiers and were killed. One child was found dead there, McKenzie said, and three other children and a baby were brought to safety from the second floor.

But, before they could reach him, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi detonated a suicide bomber, setting off a massive explosion that hurled the bodies, including his own, out of the building into the streets outside.

President Joe Biden, who monitored the attack from the White House Situation Room, called Quraishi's suicide "the final act of desperate cowardice." It echoed the self-detonating bombs by his predecessor, ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, during the US offensive in 2019 in Syria.

"The explosion, which was bigger than expected from a suicide vest, killed everyone on the third floor and even took many people out of the building," McKenzie said, adding Quraishi, his wife, and two children were killed.

Gen. Milley told President Biden US troops got a "visual ID jackpot" when they saw Quraishi's body and confirmed his identity using biometric data taken from fingerprints during the return flight, the official said. They waited to announce his death until after DNA tests were completed, the official added.

"He was on our list of targets from the early days of the campaign. He was Baghdadi's right-hand man, and personally responsible for some of ISIS' most heinous atrocities," the official said.

A second US official later said two of Quraysh's wives and one child were killed.

Syrian rescue workers said at least 13 people were killed, most of them women and children.

The Pentagon said at least two armed members of a local al-Qaeda affiliate were killed by gunfire from a US helicopter after they approached the site of the attack while US troops were still at the site.

At one point, a helicopter involved in the attack suffered a mechanical failure and had to be destroyed rather than abandoned, the Pentagon said.

President Biden said "God bless our troops" once US troops boarded after the operation, and watched them at night as they flew to safety, officials said.

US officials say Quraishi's death is another setback for a group that once ruled a self-proclaimed caliphate that stretched across the territory in Syria and Iraq. Now launch a rebel attack.

US military procedures to guard against civilian casualties came under scrutiny, following a drone strike that went wrong in Kabul, during the evacuation of US civilians from Afghanistan that the Pentagon initially hailed as a success.

The Pentagon said it would review all information from the Atmeh attack, to ensure no civilians were harmed by US forces but stressed all indications so far were that civilian deaths were caused by ISIS fighters.