IS leader confirmed dead after US strike

WASHINGTON - The shadowy leader of the Islamic State group who presided over its global terrorist acts and became arguably the world's most wanted man is dead after being targeted by a US military raid in northern Syria, US President Donald Trump said on Sunday.

As US forces bore down on him, Trump said Baghdadi fled into a tunnel with three of his children and detonated a suicide vest. "He was a sick and depraved man, and now he's gone," Trump said.

"He died like a dog, he died like a coward."

A US official said late on Saturday that Baghdadi was targeted in Syria's northwestern Idlib Province.

Separately, Trump on late Saturday had teased about a major announcement, tweeting that "Something very big has just happened!" And by Sunday morning, he was thanking Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, as well as Kurdish fighters in Syria for their support.

The strike came amid concerns that a recent US pullback from northeastern Syria could infuse new strength into the militant group, which had been defeated in vast stretches of territory it had once controlled.

Many critics of Trump's Syria pullout had expressed worries that it would lead the IS militancy to regain strength and pose a threat to US interests. The announcement about Baghdadi's death could help blunt those concerns, Reuters said.

Baghdadi led the IS group for the last five years, presiding over its ascendancy as it cultivated a reputation for beheadings and attracted hundreds of thousands of followers to a sprawling and self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

He remained among the few IS commanders still at large despite multiple claims in recent years about his death and even as his so-called caliphate dramatically shrank, with many supporters who joined the cause either imprisoned or jailed.

His exhortations were instrumental in inspiring terrorist attacks in the heart of Europe and in the United States. Shifting away from the airline hijackings and other mass-casualty attacks that came to define al-Qaida, Baghdadi and other IS leaders supported smaller-scale acts of violence that would be harder for law enforcement to prepare for.

They encouraged terrorists who could not travel to the caliphate to kill where they were, with whatever weapon they had at their disposal. In the US, multiple extremists have pledged their allegiance to Baghdadi on social media. They included the Pakistani woman and her Pakistani-American husband who committed a 2015 massacre at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California.

Agencies

(China Daily 10/28/2019 page12)