US Department of Defense / APAP
InvestigationUS Special Forces assault on the night of Oct. 26-27 in Baricha, northwestern Syria, against the head of ISIS is the culmination of a long hunt and collection information at the heart of the jihadist group.
The nights are usually rather quiet in Baricha, a hamlet backed by the Turkish border in northwestern Syria. Among the millions of Syrians forced to flee the war, many have found refuge in makeshift tents set in the middle of olive groves, far from the bombings of Russian aviation that ravage the south of the province of Idlib. Calm was broken on the night of Saturday 26 to Sunday 27 October, by the roaring helicopters, the whistling of bullets, the explosions and the barking of dogs.
A commando of special forces of the American army landed. The target of these soldiers, a hundred men who darken in the night, is none other than Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, head of the Islamic State organization (IS), the most wanted man on the planet.
The theater of operations is centered around a small house bounded by a wall, about 300 meters from Baricha. The places are isolated, without witnesses – except perhaps a shepherd, summoned to respond a few hours later to febrile fighters of Hayat Tahrir Al-Cham (HTS), the main jihadist group of the region and declared enemy of the EI. To the militiamen who came to "investigate" after having invested Baricha and its surroundings, the shepherd tells: "J'I saw foreign soldiers disembark helicopters. " He thinks that some of them, whom he heard speak in his native language, are Arabs. "They shouted in loudspeakers," Abu Mohammed, surrender! "Then they shot at the house, he says in the video posted by the group. Later, they left with two prisoners. They also gave me three children, ordering me to go one kilometer away. "
In the United States, it's still afternoon. Donald Trump left, aboard Marine One, the presidential helicopter, Camp David where he celebrated the eve the ten years of marriage of his eldest daughter, Ivanka, and Jared Kushner. He went to his Sterling Golf Club, bordered by the Potomac, Virginia. The Gulf president almost always on Saturdays. Back at 16:18 at the White House, dressed to the nines, he goes twenty minutes later to the situation room, the "crisis room" located in the basements of the west wing, to assist live operations.
As evanescent as a "ghost"
In another basement, near Baricha, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi is trapped. In the house, five people are killed, including four women and the famous "Abu Mohammed", whose shepherd had heard the name and who will prove to be the owner of the place. Pursued by a dog, cornered in a cul-de-sac, he activates his belt of explosives, killing with him two of his young children and causing a partial collapse of the basement. The "caliph" is dead. Two men, whose identity is unknown, were captured. This is what we know about the American raid, according to its official version. According to an hypothesis put forward by Iraqi IR specialist researcher Hicham Al-Hashemi, the head of IS's personal bodyguard, Ghazouan Al-Raoui, and the security chief of the organization in Syria, Abu Al -Yaman, were also present. Like a certain Abu Said Al-Iraki, perhaps the ultimate companion on the run, after nine years of tracking during which the "caliph" had become as evanescent as a ghost.
