Update: In a White House announcement, President Donald Trump said that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a U.S. commando raid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLast night US brought the world\u2019s No. 1 terrorist leader to justice,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAbu Bakr Baghdadi is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe died like a dog,\u201d said Trump. \u201cHe died like a coward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State<\/a> jihadi group who created a short-lived caliphate in Syria and Iraq, is believed dead after being targeted by a U.S. military raid in Syria, Military Times has confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Defense Department official told Military Times late Saturday that al-Baghdadi, one of the world\u2019s most wanted men, was targeted upon orders from President Donald Trump and that he was believed to have been killed. However, the Defense Department official said the military is still awaiting confirmation of al-Baghdadi\u2019s death from DNA testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The raid occurred in Syria\u2019s Idlib province, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump approved the mission nearly a week before it took place, according to Newsweek, which was the first to report the raid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It appears that al-Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest during the raid, CNN reported. The CIA assisted in locating the ISIS leader, a defense official told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A source in the region told Military Times that he saw a Delta Force task force launched aircraft from near Ain Issa, Syria, around 2 a.m. local time Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n President Donald Trump teased a major announcement, tweeting Saturday night that “Something very big has just happened!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n A White House spokesman, Hogan Gidley, told the AP that the president would be making a \u201cmajor statement\u201d at 9 a.m. EDT Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A senior Iraqi security official told the AP that Iraqi intelligence played a part in the operation. Al-Baghdadi and his wife detonated explosive vests they were wearing during the U.S. commando operation, according to the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the sensitive information and spoke on condition of anonymity. He added that other IS leaders were killed in the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If confirmed, the operation’s success could prove a major boost for Trump. The recent pullback of U.S. troops he ordered from northeastern Syria raised a storm of bipartisan criticism in Washington that the militant group could regain strength after it had lost vast stretches of territory it had once controlled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Syria war monitor, reported an attack carried out by a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by a warplane belonging to the international coalition on positions of the Hurras al-Deen, an al-Qaida-linked group, in the Barisha area north of Idlib city, after midnight on Saturday. IS operatives were believed to be hiding in the area, it said, according to the AP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It said the helicopters targeted IS positions with heavy strikes for about 120 minutes, during which jihadists fired at the aircraft with heavy weapons. The Britain-based Observatory, which operates through a network of activists on the ground, documented the death of 9 people as a result of the coalition helicopter attack. It was not immediately known whether al-Baghdadi was one of them, it said, according to the AP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Al-Baghdadi\u2019s presence in the village, a few kilometers from the Turkish border, would come as a surprise, even if some IS leaders are believed to have fled to Idlib after losing their last sliver of territory in Syria to U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in March, according to the AP. The surrounding areas are largely controlled by an IS rival, the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, although other jihadi groups sympathetic to IS operate there. Unverified video circulated online by Syrian groups appeared to support the Observatory claim that the operation occurred in Barisha, according to the AP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intelligence source on the militant leader\u2019s whereabouts could not be immediately confirmed, but both Iraqi and Kurdish officials claimed a role, according to the AP. The Turkish military also tweeted that before the operation in Idlib, it exchanged \u201cinformation\u201d and coordinated with U.S. military authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kurdish forces appeared ready to portray al-Baghdadi’s death as a joint victory for their faltering alliance with the U.S., weeks after Trump ordered American forces to withdraw from northeastern Syria, all but abandoning Washington’s allies to a wide-ranging Turkish assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Abdi, tweeted: \u201cSuccessful& historical operation due to a joint intelligence work with the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Previous reports about the death of al-Baghdadi have proved to be exaggerated greatly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In June the Russian defense ministry claimed it had killed Baghdadi in an airstrike near Raqqa in May. Raqqa was the terror group\u2019s de-facto headquarters in Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. officials weren\u2019t buying that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think Baghdadi\u2019s alive,\u201d Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mattis declined to say why he thought Baghdadi is still alive. Barring evidence that he has continued to be engaged in the command and control of the organization, the ISIS leader may have assumed a different role, Mattis suggested, such as a spiritual or propaganda leader within ISIS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUntil I see his body I am going to assume he is alive,\u201d Mattis said at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be more than two years before al-Baghdadi was heard from publicly again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In April, the shadowy leader appeared for the first time in five years in a video released by the extremist group\u2019s propaganda arm, acknowledging defeat in the group\u2019s last stronghold in Syria<\/a> but vowing a \u201clong battle\u201d ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n