who is raid on IS chief in Atmeh

As US forces raided the hideout of IS chief Abu Ibrahim Qureshi, the man who took over as the head of the terrorist group in 2019, the IS leader detonated a bomb and blew himself up. His body was thrown onto the streets outside. First responders reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women. The preparation for the operation which has been termed as "incredibly complex" started in early December. According to US officials, the operation to kill Qureshi could have been executed last year, but Biden chose the riskier course to minimize collateral damage. The helicopter operation had been repeatedly rehearsed, and the possibility that he would kill himself was also taken into consideration. Early this week, Biden was briefed on the final blueprint of the operation, and he gave the go-ahead. The explosion that the IS chief caused was on the third floor. US forces said they evacuated six civilians, including four children, from the first floor. Qureshi was known as 'Destroyer' because of his brutal operations. Born in a Turkmen family, he was the rare non-Arab leader of the IS. He had served in the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein. Though US troops zeroed in on the building and the floor that he was staying in, he never came out of the building's third floor and all his communication with the outside world was through couriers. As the operation began, Biden said, "God bless our troops' and kept a tab in real-time monitoring of the troops. When the operation began, Biden was finishing a call with French President Macron on a different subject, a White House official said. The Pentagon said, at one point, a helicopter involved in the raid suffered a mechanical failure and had to be destroyed rather than left behind. BODIES IN THE RUBBLE A video taken by a resident and seen by Reuters showed the bodies of two lifeless children and a man in the rubble of a building at the location. Other footage showed rescue workers loading what appeared to be a small body wrapped in a white plastic sheet into an ambulance. Other body bags were in the back of the vehicle. Using head torches, the workers looked for remains through chunks of concrete, children's toys, and women's clothing in the wreckage. A kitchen was blackened and burned, windows hung from their frames and plastic utensils were half-melted. Reuters could not independently verify the images. A Syrian man who witnessed the raid said he left his house after midnight and saw aircraft in the sky. "Ten minutes later we heard screams. 'Surrender, the house is surrounded,' he said. "There was shelling from airplanes and machine guns." Another witness said he saw several bodies at the scene. "There was blood everywhere" he told Reuters. He said one U.S. helicopter appeared to suffer a mechanical failure and was blown up by the U.S. forces. Local leaders, security officials, and residents in northern Iraq say Islamic State has been re-emerging as a deadly threat, aided by a lack of central control in many areas. "Qureshi’s killing is a huge deal and a huge blow to ISIS because ISIS never heard from this new leader" Syria analyst Hassan said. "ISIS will continue to be weak and under pressure as long as the Americans are on the ground in Iraq and Syria." Qureshi was hiding out in a region of Syria that is home to several militant groups including a faction whose leaders include foreign fighters. U.S. forces have for years used drones to target jihadists in the area, but Thursday's operation appeared to be the largest by U.S. forces in the northwest since the raid that killed al-Baghdadi, said Charles Lister, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Middle East Institute. Beyond Qureshi, who was once held in U.S. custody, little is known of the group's top levels - partly because it now operates in a secretive structure of autonomous local cells, rather than the centralized administration of the 'caliphate'. The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State said in mid-2019, after the group's battlefield defeat, that it retained 14,000 to 18,000 members, including 3,000 foreigners, though precise numbers are as elusive as the group itself. Analysts say many local fighters may have slipped back into normal life, ready to re-emerge when the opportunity emerges.