TARGET ON THIRD FLOOR
US officials said that Qurashi’s death was another setback for a group that once ruled a self-proclaimed caliphate stretching across territory in Syria and Iraq. It is now waging insurgent attacks.
Planning for the operation began in early December, when officials became convinced that the Islamic State leader was living in the building, the officials said. Biden received a detailed briefing on options for capturing Qurashi alive on Dec 20, a senior White House official said.
One official said that the operation was complicated by the fact that Qurashi rarely left his residence on the building’s third floor and relied on couriers to interact with the outside world.
The number of children seen in the area and families believed to be living on the first floor led US officials to try to craft a mission aiming to safeguard civilians, they said.
That ultimately required putting US forces at risk in a raid, instead of launching a remote strike, the officials said.
US military procedures to guard against civilian casualties are under scrutiny following a high-profile mistaken drone strike in Kabul during the US evacuation of civilians from Afghanistan that the Pentagon initially hailed a success.
The Pentagon said that it would review all the information from the Atme raid to ensure that no civilians were harmed by US forces, but stressed all indications so far were that civilian deaths were caused by Islamic State fighters themselves.
Biden gave final approvals for the mission on Tuesday (Feb 2) during an Oval Office meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the top American military officer, US officials said.
Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other administration officials received real-time updates from Austin, Milley and McKenzie as they watched the operation unfold on several screens from the Situation Room, the officials said.
Biden joined the group in the Situation Room at around 5pm local time on Wednesday after finishing a call with French President Emmanuel Macron on an unrelated topic, the White House official said.
At one point, a helicopter involved in the raid suffered a mechanical failure and had to be destroyed rather than left behind, the Pentagon said.
Biden said “God bless our troops” once US forces were wheels up after the operation, and kept tabs on them during the night as they flew to safety, officials said.
Once US forces were in safety, Biden reflected on an airstrike carried out in 2015 – when he was serving as vice president – that killed another Islamic State leader and injured Qurashi, costing him a leg, the White House official said.
Milley told Biden that US forces hit “a visual ID jackpot” when they viewed Qurashi’s body and confirmed his identity using biometric data taken from a fingerprint during the flight back, the official said. They waited to announce his death until after a DNA test was completed, the official added.
“He was on our target list from the earliest days of the campaign. He was Baghdadi’s right-hand man, and … was personally responsible for some of the most vicious ISIS atrocities,” the official said.
For all the latest world News Click Here
