On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump announced that terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a military raid led by the U.S. this weekend. According to a report by USA Today, al-Baghdadi is considered by some the most wanted man in the world. He was a leader in the organization known as the Islamic State, or ISIS.
President Trump announced that al-Baghdadi was found and killed in northwestern Syria on Saturday. The mission was carried out by United States Special Operations commandos, with assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency. After the CIA located al-Baghdadi, the commandos moved in to take him out.
Videos by PopCulture.com
The president announced the operation in a press conference from The White House on Sunday morning. It specifically targeted al-Baghdadi, who is reportedly the highest-ranking terrorist to be killed or captured since the U.S. took out Osama bin Laden in 2011. The U.S. has been searching for al-Baghdadi for years and even reportedly put a $25 million bounty on him in years past. Many previous reports of his death have turned out to be false.
In the press conference, President Trump emphasized how “dangerous” the mission was, noting that the U.S. had to fly over Russian airspace to get to al-Baghdadi. He also condemned the terrorist leader throughout his remarks.
“He died like a dog. He died like a coward,” he said.
He also revealed that the U.S. forces dealt with local gunfire during the raid. There were reportedly no casualties or injuries among the Special Operations team that carried out the mission.
Some news outlets saw the announcement coming on Saturday night, after the president posted some tweets teasing a big revelation.
“Something very big has just happened!” he wrote at the time.
Experts expected President Trump to capitalize on this victory in particular, since he took so much criticism for withdrawing U.S. troops from northern Syria earlier this month. The move allowed Turkey to re-enter the area and attack its Kurdish rivals, who have been close allies of U.S. forces recently.
President Trump was criticized on both sides of the aisle, and in many cases, by his usual political friends, who noted that the Kurds had helped in the fight against ISIS.
Now, both the Kurds and Turks have claimed that they provided assistance on the raid that killed al-Baghdadi. The commanding general of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, tweeted about the “successful & historical operation” from the organization’s official Twitter account. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense posted that it had “information exchange and coordination” with the U.S. military for the raid.
