Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi blows himself up to evade capture, kills multiple family members: USA
AMMAN / ATMEH, Syria:
In a corner of Syria cramped with people ravaged by 11 years of civil war, the leader of the Islamic State and his family hide in plain sight: they keep to themselves, their neighbors don’t check each other’s past, rent is paid on time.
The status quo was broken on Thursday night, when US special forces flooded the town of Atmeh in northwestern Syria to raid his hideout.
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-QuraishiThe head of one of the world’s most feared terrorist groups, blew himself up to evade capture, killing several family members and others in the blast, according to the United States.
His death marks a blow to ISIS as they return as a deadly threat in Syria and Iraq.
Until that time, locals believed that Quraishi was a Syrian merchant from Aleppo who brought his family to the relatively safe Atmeh, near the Turkish border, far from the front lines of the war. Syrian conflict.
Little attention has been paid to the three-story building on the edge of town since Quraishi, an Iraqi, rented an apartment there a year ago, taking the initial first floor before expanding to rent out the entire top floor.
A woman who lives on the ground floor and knows her neighbors as “Abu Ahmed’s family” said the children are usually well behaved and out of sight, sometimes accompanying their mother to the store.
“They keep it to themselves and our kids sometimes play with their kids outside, but we never socialize with them,” the woman, Ameena, said in an interview. by phone. She refused to give her name for fear of retribution.
Ameena said she was once offered tea by one of Quraishi’s wives, Um Ahmad. She told Ameena her husband was a merchant from Aleppo who had fled the city during the war. With hindsight, Ameena said she was struck by how rarely saw him.
The women wear tight black robes, characteristic of conservative Muslims.
While the family is not from Atmeh, this did not attract attention in an area where tens of thousands of people have fled from around the country.
“We think they might have been through a lot, but as you know everyone here has a tragedy and people rarely talk about what happened to them all these years and every Everyone likes to keep it to themselves,” Ameena said.
HAPPENING NEARLY TO THE DESTROY
Quraishi took over leadership of ISIS following the death in 2019 of its founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who also died in a raid by US commandos detonating explosives.
Baghdadi has also taken refuge in northwestern Syria, the last major bastion of the rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad. Baghdadi’s hideout is about 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Atmeh, also in Idlib province.
Quraishi’s hideout is near a checkpoint operated by the armed group that controls much of the Idlib region – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist faction formerly known as the Nusra Front that has been an enemy of IS in the past. many years.
It is also not far from Turkish positions in the nearby Afrin area, northwest Syria.
Despite the proximity of the hostile forces, it is a relatively good refuge for Quraishi as he seeks to revive the fate of ISIS, which controlled a third of Iraq and Syria in 2014 before being recaptured. defeat.
Syrians say it’s easy for strangers to go unnoticed. In addition to internally displaced people, the region also has foreign Islamists who came to the country during the war as fighters or civilian volunteers.
Last October, another senior ISIS leader, Sami Jasim, was captured in northwestern Syria during an operation carried out by Iraq with the help of Turkey.
A senior White House official said the blast is believed to have killed Quraishi, his two wives and a child on one floor, and potentially a child on another, along with the middle-aged couple. Quraishi, who was killed after opening fire on American forces.
Syrian rescue workers said 13 people were killed after the raid began, including four women and six children.
Neighbors said four children were rescued after the assault – a 12-year-old girl, boys aged 7 and 4 and an infant. It is not clear if they are related to the Quraishi. The badly damaged apartments were littered with children’s toys, witnesses added.
The US official said Quraishi used the house and an unwitting family living on the first floor as a “protective shield”, an element that complicates the planning of the raid.
The landlord’s son told Reuters each apartment was rented for $160 a month.
“My father leaves me to pay the rent and if he (Quraishi) has problems with water, electricity or the Internet, we will help him. We don’t know much more about him,” said the son, whose name is Mr. Abu Omar, said. .
Ahmed al Saloum, a 56-year-old carpenter who lives nearby, said he often saw a woman hanging laundry from a second-floor balcony. “They never raised any suspicions,” he said.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
