IS 지도자 아부 바크르 알 바그다디, 미국 공습으로 사망한 듯 VIDEO: ISIS leader 'dead': Dramatic moment US Special Ops forces 'blitzed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's Syrian lair...
Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi believed dead in US raid
Donald Trump expected to make statement at 9am Washington time
Martin Chulov and Michael Safi
Sun 27 Oct 2019 10.28 GMTFirst published on Sun 27 Oct 2019 04.46 GMT
The leader of the Islamic State terror group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is believed to have died in a US raid in north-western Syria overnight, intelligence officials have claimed.
In September Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi reportedly called on Islamic State members to try to free Isis detainees and women held in jails and camps in Syria./dailymail.uk
IS 지도자 아부 바크르 알 바그다디, 미국 공습으로 사망한 듯 이슬람국가(IS)의 지도자 아부 바크르 알 바그다디가 시리아 북서부에서 미군의 공습으로 사망한 것으로 추정된다고 정보당국이 밝혔다. 바그다디가 이라크에서 형제의 아내 2명을 이드립으로 옮긴 밀입국자를 통해 바그다디를 추적한 지 한 달간의 정보작전에 이어 이번 공습이 있었다고 두 관계자는 가디언에 말했다. 도널드 트럼프 미국 대통령은 26일 오전 9시(GMT 오후 1시) 워싱턴을 방문해 해명 없이 트위터를 통해 "매우 큰 일이 발생했다"고 발표했다. 정보당국은 바그다디가 숨어있던 터키 국경 근처의 한 주택에 접근했을 때 자살 벨트를 터뜨렸을 것으로 보고 있다. 이 폭발로 그의 아내 2명도 사망한 것으로 추정된다. 23일 오전 1시30분쯤 시리아 시간으로 작은 마을 바리샤에서 폭발과 총성이 보고됐다. 이시스 지도자는 자신을 변호하려 했던 경호원 한 명의 자택까지 추적된 것으로 파악되고 있다. 그 습격으로 적어도 9명이 사망한 것으로 생각된다. 이라크 국영 TV는 23일 공습 장면을 방영했다. 만약 이 사망이 확인된다면, 2014년 중반부터 5년 동안 이 지역에 만연해 있던 테러 집단에 엄청난 타격이 될 것이고, 전 세계에 끔찍한 테러를 야기시켜, 대규모 난민 이탈을 증폭시키고, 수천 명의 목숨을 앗아 갈 것이다. 그 기간 내내 바그다디는 이시스의 얼굴, 즉 문명 전쟁을 계속 부추기는 동시에 세계 정보기관을 따돌린 무시무시한 이론가였다. 전쟁감시단체인 시리아인권감시단은 국제연합 소속 전단을 동반한 헬기 1개 중대 8대가 이디립시 북부의 바리샤 지역에 숨어 있는 것으로 추정되는 후라스 알딘(알카에다 계열)의 위치를 공격했다고 보고했다. 지난 한 달 동안, 이라크 관리들이 그의 가족과 아내를 이라크에서 시리아로 옮긴 한 시리아인의 신원을 확인하면서 바그다디에 대한 수색은 더욱 심해졌다. 이라크 정보당국은 바그다디의 두 형제인 주마와 아흐마디의 부인들이 다른 가족들과 함께 이 지역으로 이동하면서 감시당했다고 말했다. 이 정보는 이달 초 CIA에 전달되었다고 관리들은 말한다. 이시스와 연결된 텔레그램 계정은 일요일 바그다디를 위해 기도를 올렸으나 그의 죽음을 확인하지는 못했다. 이 테러 단체는 5년 동안 두 나라의 많은 지역에서 전쟁을 치른 후 더 이상 시리아나 이라크의 영토를 통제하지 않고 있다. 황기철 콘페이퍼 에디터 큐레이터 Ki Chul Hwang, conpaper editor, curator |
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The raid followed a month-long intelligence operation that had tracked Baghdadi to the region through a smuggler who had moved the wives of two of his brothers from Iraq to Idlib, two officials told the Guardian.
Footage appears to show aftermath of raid targeting Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
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Donald Trump is due to make an announcement at 9am (1pm GMT) on Sunday in Washington, having tweeted on Saturday night without explanation: “Something very big has just happened!”
Intelligence officials believe Baghdadi may have detonated a suicide belt as troops approached a house near the Turkish border in which he was hiding. The blast is thought to have also killed two of his wives.
Explosions and gunfire were reported from the small town of Barisha at about 1.30am Syrian time on Sunday. It is understood that the Isis leader had been tracked to the home of one his bodyguards who attempted to defend him. The raid is thought to have left at least nine people dead.
Iraqi state television aired footage on Sunday that it said showed the raid.
If confirmed, the death would be a devastating blow to a terror group that had run rampant across the region for five years from mid-2014, spawning gruesome terror attacks across the world, amplifying a mass refugee exodus and sparking a war to contain them that killed thousands of people and displaced millions more.
Throughout that time, Baghdadi remained the face of Isis: a fearsome implacable ideologue who eluded the world’s intelligence agencies while continuing to incite a war of civilisations.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, reported that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by a warplane belonging to the international coalition attacked positions of the Hurras al-Deen (an al-Qaida affiliated group) where Isis operatives were believed to be hiding in the Barisha area north of Idlib city.
Over the past month, the manhunt for Baghdadi intensified after Iraqi officials identified a Syrian man who had moved his family members and wives from Iraq to Syria. An Iraqi intelligence official said the wives of Baghdadi’s two brothers, Jumah and Ahmad, along with other family members, were monitored as they moved to the region. The information was passed to the CIA earlier this month, the officials say.
Telegram accounts linked to Isis were on Sunday offering prayers for Baghdadi, but not confirming his death. The terror group no longer controls territory in Syria or Iraq after a five-year war across much of both countries.
Several Syrian rebel groups active in Idlib province say they had been asked by US officials over the past fortnight to establish whether senior Isis members were hiding in Idlib.
Iran said it had been informed by Syrian sources that Baghdadi had been killed, two Iranian officials told Reuters on Sunday. “Iran was informed about Baghdadi’s death by Syrian officials who got it from the field,” one of the officials said.
“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 sources said.
Syrians ride a motorcycle past a burnt vehicle near the site where a helicopter gunfire reportedly killed nine people near the northwestern Syrian village of Barisha. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was reportedly among those who died in the attack /dailymail.uk
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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death would be a significant fillip for the US president, Donald Trump.
The region is mostly held by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that opposes Isis and routinely executes people thought to be affiliated with the group. Though long speculated to be a possible hideout, Idlib had been thought by many regional officials to be too risky a proposition for Baghdadi who was more accustomed to the deserts of Iraq, where his organisation had risen.
The death of Baghdadi would be a significant fillip for Trump, who has faced withering criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike for his troop withdrawal from north-eastern Syria, which permitted Turkey to attack the US’s Kurdish allies. He has also repeatedly insisted the US had defeated Isis – a claim denied by US generals and intelligence leaders.
Many critics of Trump’s Syria pullout have expressed worries that it would allow Isis to regain strength and pose a threat to US interests. An announcement about Baghdadi’s death could help blunt those concerns.
Trump was expected to make the statement in the White House diplomatic reception room, which he has used to make a number of major announcements. Last week he used the same room to announce that a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurds had taken hold.
Isis leader Baghdadi appears in video for first time in five years
For days, US officials had feared that Isis would seek to capitalise on the upheaval in Syria. But they also saw a potential opportunity, in which Isis leaders might break from more secretive routines to communicate with operatives, potentially creating a chance for the US and its allies to detect them.
Baghdadi, who has $25m bounty on his head, was long thought to hiding somewhere along the Iraq-Syria border. He has led the group since 2010, when it was still an underground al-Qaida offshoot in Iraq.
A picture taken on October 27, 2019 shows a burnt vehicle at the site where a helicopter gunfire reportedly killed nine people near the northwestern Syrian village of Barisha in the province of Idlib near the border with Turkey /dailymail.uk
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On 16 September, Isis’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 US and its proxies had been defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the US had been “dragged” into Mali and Niger.
At the height of its power Isis ruled 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 in 2017, the fall 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.
On Saturday the White House spokesman, Hogan Gidley, said Trump planned to make a “major statement” on Sunday morning, but gave no further details. It was unclear what the topic of the president’s statement might be.
US air strikes killed most of his top lieutenants, and before Isis published a video message of Baghdadi in April there had been conflicting reports over whether he was alive.
Despite losing its last significant territory, Isis is believed to have sleeper cells around the world, and some fighters operate from the shadows in Syria’s desert and Iraq’s cities.
The group claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed more than 250 people in April, though police in the Indian Ocean island country say they are yet to establish a direct link to the terrorist group.
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