During a Middle East Institute event on Thursday, Gen. Frank McKenzie, the top US general of US Central Command, said that notorious ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi that was reportedly killed during a US operation in Syria on Wednesday, was actually found dead outside of the building where he was living after he detonated an explosive.
“US forces discovered the ISIS Amir dead on the ground outside the building due to the power of the self-initiated explosion on the third floor,” McKenzie added.
According to McKenzie, US forces used fingerprints and DNA analysis to identify the ISIS leader.
The aim of the US-led operation in Syria on Wednesday, according to Gen. McKenzie, was to “capture” the ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.
During another briefing at the Pentagon earlier on Thursday, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said that the explosive that Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi detonated killed him, his wife, and two of his children.
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John Kirby said during the news conference that the US-led operation that killed ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi on Wednesday took around two hours from start to finish.
The “level of care that US special operations forces used in this mission, which was designed to preserve innocent life.”
“To carry out this operation as they did,” Kirby said, speaks to the “level of care that US special operations forces used in this mission, which was designed to preserve innocent life.”
According to Kirby, US forces first secured and isolated the facility. Then they urged everyone, including Qurayshi, to leave the building where he was hiding.
Kirby added that US forces used a bullhorn and “made repeated call outs beseeching everyone in that structure to leave.”
Then, Kirby said, US troops moved in after hearing an explosion on the third floor of the building, followed by “gunfire.”
The two-hour timetable was the original intention, according to Kirby.
ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi alias “Hajji Abdullah” has been significantly involved in the slave trade of women from Iraq’s minority religious group, the Yazidi, according to allegations dating back to 2015.
Investigations on his possible criminal culpability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and other crimes such as human trafficking in Syria and Iraq revealed his probable criminal responsibility.
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From 2014 to 2016, he was ISIS’s leading judge and Sharia law official in Iraq, where he exercised religious control over all ISIS activity in the country.
He not only played a crucial role in the Islamic State’s slave trade in Yazidi women and children, but he himself enslaved and raped captive women.
Reports also has it that Hajji Abdullah, as he’s fondly called, was in charge of all Yazidi prisoners in Iraq who were taken during ISIS’ Sinjar military operation in August 2014.
He handled the sabaya distribution of Yazidi women and small children to ISIS members (female spoils of war). He was also responsible for the forcible conversion of infidels to Islam and the slaughter of hundreds of Yazidi men and boys.
Speaking to the Nation on Thursday about a US Special Operations counterterrorism raid in which the commander of the Islamic State militant group, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was killed, President Biden announced that “this horrific terrorist leader is no more.”
From the White House, Biden said, “Last night’s operation eliminated a significant terrorist leader off the battlefield, and it sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: We will come after you and find you.”
Source: CNN.
