US troops train helicopter attacks repeatedly, hoping to arrest the leader of the Islamic state on the third floor of a residential building in the Syrian city on the Turkish border, where he hid with his family.
But before they could contact him, Abu Ibrahim Al-Hashemi Al-Quraishi detonated a suicide bombing, triggered a big explosion that blew the broken body – including himself – out of the building to the streets outside.
President Joe Biden, who monitored the attack from the White House situation room, called quraishi suicide “the last action from the cowardly desperate.” It echoed the self detonation from the bomb by its predecessor, founder of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, during the US attack in 2019 in Syria.
For residents in the city of Atmeh, the incident was scary, because US troops swept the helicopter on board before trying to evacuate civilians from the Cinder Block building, using loudspeakers to tell them to leave.
“Men, women, and children raise their hands. You are in the salvation of the American coalition that surrounds the area. You will die if you don’t come out,” said a woman told US warning.