Turkey exchanged information and coordinated with the U.S. before an American operation to reportedly kill a terrorist chief in northwestern Syria, Turkey's National Defense Ministry said Sunday.
“Prior to the U.S. Operation in Idlib Province of Syria last night, information exchange and coordination between the military authorities of both countries took place,” the ministry said on Twitter.
The leader of the terror group Daesh, also known as ISIS, whose whereabouts have been unknown for some time, is dead, reported U.S. magazine Newsweek early Sunday.
Citing two anonymous sources from the Pentagon and the army, it said the U.S. military conducted a special operations raid against Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Idlib, northwestern Syria.
Six civilians, including two men, three women and a chid, have been killed in the operation, local activists said.
U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted, in apparent reference to the operation, "Something very big has just happened!"
"Trump approved the mission nearly a week before it took place," said Newsweek.
A Pentagon source told Newsweek that Baghdadi was "dead pending verification."
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Baghdadi was targeted in the overnight raid but was unable to say whether the operation was successful.
A commander of one of the militant factions in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib said Baghdadi was believed to have been killed in a raid after midnight on Saturday involving helicopters, warplanes and a ground clash in the village of Brisha near the Turkish border.
Two Iraqi security sources and two Iranian officials said they had received confirmation from inside Syria that Baghdadi had been killed.
"Our sources from inside Syria have confirmed to the Iraqi intelligence team tasked with pursuing Baghdadi that he has been killed alongside his personal bodyguard in Idlib after his hiding place was discovered when he tried to get his family out of Idlib towards the Turkish border," one of the Iraqi officials said.
U.S. magazine Newsweek, which first reported the news, said it had been told by a U.S. Army official briefed on the raid that Baghdadi was dead. It said the operation was carried out by special operations forces after receiving actionable intelligence.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley announced late on Saturday that Trump would make a "major statement" at 9 a.m. EST (1300 GMT) on Sunday. Gidley gave no further details.
The president gave an indication that something was afoot earlier on Saturday night when he tweeted without explanation, "Something very big has just happened!"
Trump has faced withering criticism from both Republicans and Democrats alike for his U.S. troop withdrawal from northeastern Syria, which permitted Turkey to attack America's Kurdish allies.
Many critics of Trump's Syria pullout have expressed worries that it would lead the Daesh militancy to regain strength and pose a threat to U.S. interests. An announcement about Baghdadi's death could help blunt those concerns.
For days, U.S. officials had feared that Daesh would seek to capitalize on the upheaval in Syria. But they also saw a potential opportunity, in which Daesh leaders might break from more secretive routines to communicate with operatives, potentially creating a chance for the United States and its allies to detect them.
Baghdadi was long thought to be hiding somewhere along the Iraq-Syria border. He has led the group since 2010, when it was still an underground offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq.
On Sept. 16, Daesh's media network issued a 30-minute audio message purporting to come from Baghdadi, in which he said operations were taking place daily and called on supporters to free women jailed in camps in Iraq and Syria over their alleged links to his group.
In the audio message, Baghdadi also said the United States and its proxies had been defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the United States had been "dragged" into Mali and Niger.
At the height of its power Daesh ruled over millions of people in territory running from northern Syria through towns and villages along the Tigris and Euphrates valleys to the outskirts of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
But the fall in 2017 of Mosul and Raqqa, its strongholds in Iraq and Syria respectively, stripped Baghdadi, an Iraqi, of the trappings of a caliph and turned him into a fugitive thought to be moving along the desert border between Iraq and Syria.
U.S. air strikes killed most of his top lieutenants, and before Daesh published a video message of Baghdadi in April there had been conflicting reports over whether he was alive.
Despite losing its last significant territory, Daesh is believed to have sleeper cells around the world, and some fighters operate from the shadows in Syria's desert and Iraq's cities.
Zaman Al Wasl, Reuters, AA
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.