By Ghaith Al­sayed, Loli­ta C. Bal­dor, Bassem Mroue and Zeke Miller | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

AT­MEH, Syr­ia (AP) — The leader of the vi­o­lent Is­lam­ic State group was killed Thurs­day, blow­ing him­self up along with mem­bers of his fam­i­ly dur­ing an overnight raid car­ried out by U.S. spe­cial op­er­a­tions forces in north-west­ern Syr­ia, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said.

The raid tar­get­ed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashi­mi al-Qurayshi, who took over as head of the mil­i­tant group on Oct. 31, 2019, just days af­ter leader Abu Bakr al-Bagh­da­di died dur­ing a U.S. raid in the same area. Biden said al-Qurayshi died as al-Bagh­da­di did, by ex­plod­ing a bomb that killed him­self and mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing women and chil­dren, as U.S. forces ap­proached.

The op­er­a­tion came as IS has been try­ing for a resur­gence, with a se­ries of at­tacks in the re­gion, in­clud­ing an as­sault late last month to seize a prison in north­east Syr­ia hold­ing at least 3,000 IS de­tainees, its bold­est op­er­a­tion in years.

“Thanks to the brav­ery of our troops this hor­ri­ble ter­ror­ist leader is no more,” Biden said. He said al-Qurayshi had been re­spon­si­ble for the prison strike, as well as geno­cide against the Yazi­di peo­ple in Iraq in 2014.

U.S. spe­cial forces land­ed in he­li­copters and at­tacked a house in a rebel-held cor­ner of Syr­ia, clash­ing for two hours with gun­men, wit­ness­es said. Res­i­dents de­scribed con­tin­u­ous gun­fire and ex­plo­sions that jolt­ed the town of At­meh near the Turk­ish bor­der, an area dot­ted with camps for in­ter­nal­ly dis­placed peo­ple from Syr­ia’s civ­il war.

Biden said he or­dered U.S. forces to “take every pre­cau­tion avail­able to min­i­mize civil­ian ca­su­al­ties,” the rea­son they did not con­duct an airstrike on the home.

First re­spon­ders re­port­ed that 13 peo­ple had been killed, in­clud­ing six chil­dren and four women. White House press sec­re­tary Jen Psa­ki said U.S. of­fi­cials be­lieve al-Qurayshi’s ex­plo­sive killed him­self, his wife, and three chil­dren. She added that U.S. of­fi­cials were con­duct­ing an as­sess­ment to de­ter­mine whether any civil­ians were killed.

U.S. forces col­lect­ed DNA, which lat­er con­firmed al-Qurayshi’s death, of­fi­cials said.

In this image provided by The White House, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and members of the President's national security team observe from the Situation Room at the White House in Washington, on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, the counterterrorism operation responsible for removing from the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of the Islamic State group. (Adam Schultz/The White House via AP)

Biden, along with Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris and se­nior na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty aides mon­i­tored a live feed of the op­er­a­tion from the White House Sit­u­a­tion Room ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial. The pres­i­dent was kept abreast of the com­man­dos’ long flight out of Syr­ia by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­vis­er Jake Sul­li­van overnight.

The op­er­a­tion marked a mil­i­tary suc­cess for the Unit­ed States at an im­por­tant time af­ter set­backs else­where — in­clud­ing the chaot­ic Afghanistan with­draw­al — had led al­lies and op­po­nents to con­clude U.S. pow­er glob­al­ly was weak­en­ing.

The house, sur­round­ed by olive trees in fields out­side At­meh, was left with its top floor shat­tered and blood spat­tered in­side. A jour­nal­ist on as­sign­ment for The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and sev­er­al res­i­dents, said they saw body parts scat­tered near the site. Most res­i­dents spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty for fear of reprisals.

“The mis­sion was suc­cess­ful,” Pen­ta­gon press sec­re­tary John Kir­by said in a brief state­ment. “There were no U.S. ca­su­al­ties.”

Idlib is large­ly con­trolled by Turk­ish-backed fight­ers but is al­so an al-Qai­da strong­hold and home to sev­er­al of its top op­er­a­tives. Oth­er mil­i­tants, in­clud­ing ex­trem­ists from the ri­val IS group, have al­so found refuge in the re­gion.

“The first mo­ments were ter­ri­fy­ing; no one knew what was hap­pen­ing,” said Jamil el-Ded­do, a res­i­dent of a near­by refugee camp. “We were wor­ried it could be Syr­i­an air­craft, which brought back mem­o­ries of bar­rel bombs that used to be dropped on us,” he added, re­fer­ring to crude ex­plo­sives-filled con­tain­ers used by Pres­i­dent Bashar As­sad’s forces against op­po­nents dur­ing the Syr­i­an con­flict.

The top floor of the low house was near­ly de­stroyed, send­ing white bricks tum­bling to the ground be­low.

Blood could be seen on the walls and floor of the re­main­ing struc­ture. A wrecked bed­room had a child’s wood­en crib and a stuffed rab­bit doll. On one dam­aged wall, a blue plas­tic ba­by swing was still hang­ing. Re­li­gious books, in­clud­ing a bi­og­ra­phy of Is­lam’s Prophet Mo­ham­mad, were in the house.

People inspect a destroyed house following an operation by the U.S. military in the Syrian village of Atmeh, in Idlib province, Syria, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022. U.S. special operations forces conducted a large-scale counterterrorism raid in northwestern Syria overnight Thursday, in what the Pentagon said was a "successful mission." Residents and activists reported multiple deaths including civilians from the attack. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

Al-Qurayshi had kept an ex­treme­ly low pro­file since he took over lead­er­ship of the Is­lam­ic State. He had not ap­peared in pub­lic, and rarely re­leased any au­dio record­ings. His in­flu­ence and day-to-day in­volve­ment in the group’s op­er­a­tions was not known and it is dif­fi­cult to gauge how his death will af­fect the group.

U.S. of­fi­cials said Al-Qurayshi nev­er left his third floor apart­ment, where he lived with his fam­i­ly, ex­cept to bathe on the build­ing’s roof. He com­mu­ni­cat­ed on­ly through couri­ers, ac­cord­ing to U.S. of­fi­cials, di­rect­ly over­see­ing the group’s op­er­a­tions in Syr­ia, in­clud­ing last month’s as­sault on at­tack on the prison.

Over the past sev­er­al months, Biden has been reg­u­lar­ly up­dat­ed on the in­tel­li­gence sur­round­ing al-Qurayshi’s where­abouts and the op­er­a­tional plan­ning for the raid once he was lo­cat­ed, of­fi­cials said.

In De­cem­ber, a table­top mod­el of the three-floor house was brought to the Sit­u­a­tion Room.

The sec­ond floor of the house was oc­cu­pied by a low­er-rank­ing Is­lam­ic State leader and his fam­i­ly, but the first floor con­tained civil­ians who were un­con­nect­ed to the ter­ror­ist group and un­aware of al-Qurayshi’s pres­ence, ac­cord­ing to U.S. of­fi­cials, who de­scribed them as the IS leader’s un­wit­ting hu­man shields.

Biden gave “the fi­nal go” on the mis­sion on Tues­day morn­ing dur­ing his dai­ly na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty brief­ing in the Oval Of­fice, where he was joined by De­fense Sec­re­tary Lloyd Austin and Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Mil­ley.

In the first stages of the op­er­a­tion, U.S. com­man­dos ap­proached the build­ing and an­nounced their pres­ence. Res­i­dents and ac­tivists de­scribed wit­ness­ing a large ground as­sault, with U.S. forces us­ing mega­phones urg­ing women and chil­dren to leave the area.

Much to the re­lief of U.S. of­fi­cials, the fam­i­ly on the first floor ex­it­ed the build­ing un­harmed. The force of the ex­plo­sion trigged by al-Qurayshi blew bod­ies out of the house.

The IS lieu­tenant, who of­fi­cials did not name, who lived on the sec­ond floor bar­ri­cad­ed him­self in­side along with his wife and en­gaged in com­bat with the com­man­dos who en­tered the home af­ter the ex­plo­sion. Af­ter a fire­fight, in which both were killed, of­fi­cials said four chil­dren left the build­ing.

The spe­cial op­er­a­tions forces spent about two hours on the ground, longer than usu­al for such an op­er­a­tion — in­dica­tive, U.S. of­fi­cials said, of cau­tion to min­i­mize civil­ian ca­su­al­ties.

Be­fore they left, an­oth­er fire­fight erupt­ed with a lo­cal ex­trem­ist group. At least two fight­ers were killed, of­fi­cials said.

President Joe Biden speaks about a counterterrorism raid carried out by U.S. special forces that killed top Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in northwestern Syria, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

U.S. troops launched the air­borne raid from a base in the re­gion, but of­fi­cials would not spec­i­fy the pre­cise lo­ca­tion due to op­er­a­tional se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. They added that the U.S. “de­con­flict­ed” the op­er­a­tion with a “a range of en­ti­ties” but did not spec­i­fy whether those in­clud­ed Rus­sia, which has sup­port­ed the As­sad gov­ern­ment in Syr­ia.

There was no com­ment from the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment, which rarely ac­knowl­edges or com­ments on at­tacks by for­eign coun­tries tar­get­ing ar­eas out­side its con­trol.

A U.S. of­fi­cial said one of the he­li­copters in the raid suf­fered a me­chan­i­cal prob­lem and was redi­rect­ed to a site near­by, where it was de­stroyed.

Through slick­ly en­gi­neered pro­pa­gan­da, in­clud­ing bru­tal be­head­ing videos, IS emerged as a dom­i­nant glob­al ex­trem­ist threat in the past decade. Its clar­i­on call to fol­low­ers in the West to ei­ther join its self-de­scribed caliphate in Syr­ia, or to com­mit acts of vi­o­lence at home, in­spired killings in the U.S. as well as thou­sands of trav­el­ers de­ter­mined to be­come for­eign fight­ers. The al­lure of IS to would-be mil­i­tants has proved chal­leng­ing for the West to ful­ly stamp out even amid lead­er­ship changes and U.S. mil­i­tary strikes and raids.

At the height of its ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­quests around 2014, the Is­lam­ic State con­trolled more than 40,000 square miles stretch­ing from Syr­ia to Iraq and ruled over 8 mil­lion peo­ple.

Last month’s at­tack on the prison in Hasa­ka marked the group’s biggest mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion since it was de­feat­ed, and its mem­bers scat­tered un­der­ground in 2019. The at­tack ap­peared aimed to break free se­nior IS op­er­a­tives in the prison.

It took 10 days of fight­ing for U.S.-backed, Kur­dish-led forces to re­take the prison ful­ly, and the force said more than 120 of its fight­ers and prison work­ers were killed along with 374 mil­i­tants.

The U.S.-led coali­tion has tar­get­ed high-pro­file mil­i­tants on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions in re­cent years, aim­ing to dis­rupt what U.S. of­fi­cials say is a se­cre­tive cell known as the Kho­rasan group that is plan­ning ex­ter­nal at­tacks. A U.S. airstrike killed al-Qai­da’s sec­ond in com­mand, for­mer bin Laden aide Abu al-Kheir al-Mas­ri, in Syr­ia in 2017.

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Loli­ta C. Bal­dor and Zeke Miller re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton; Bassem Mroue from Beirut. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Zeina Karam in Beirut, Qas­sim Ab­dul-Zahra in Bagh­dad and Er­ic Tuck­er, Chris Megerian, Ellen Knick­mey­er and Alexan­dra Jaffe in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed re­port­ing.