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In a statement Thursday, Biden said: “Last night at my direction, U.S. military forces in northwest Syria successfully undertook a counterterrorism operation to protect the American people and our Allies, and make the world a safer place. Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi — the leader of ISIS. All Americans have returned safely from the operation.”
Biden said he would deliver remarks to the American people later Thursday morning.
A U.S. official with knowledge of the situation said the civilian casualties were caused by a man in the targeted compound who detonated explosives, killing multiple women and children. An American helicopter experienced a mechanical malfunction, prompting U.S. troops to blow it up in place before they flew away on other aircraft, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Residents in the area described a thunderous, early morning assault involving multiple helicopters and heavy machine gun fire. First responders said at least 13 people were killed.
The White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense group that works in parts of the country not controlled by the government, said they have recovered 13 bodies so far, including those of six children and four women, from a house that appeared to be the target of the operation. They also said they treated a nearby resident and a young girl who lived in the house, whose entire family they said was killed.
Residents in the northern Idlib province said they heard helicopters about 1 a.m. local time, and later, what they described as the sound of heavy “clashes.”
Unconfirmed reports circulated that American forces were hunting a leader of the Islamic State or another local jihadist group. “There were no U.S. casualties. More information will be provided as it becomes available,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.
A spokesman for the White Helmets said the group “cannot determine whether there were bodies that were retrieved by U.S. forces because there is blood everywhere.” It was not immediately clear what had caused the casualties. The White Helmets, as well as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said there were exchanges of fire during the confrontation at the house.
Ahmed, a resident who said he lives less than two miles from the scene and who spoke on the condition that he be identified by only his first name due to safety concerns, said in a telephone interview that he heard helicopters as he was preparing to go to sleep at around 1 a.m.
The sound was not unfamiliar in the area — helicopters often arrived to switch out Turkish troops stationed nearby, he said. But this was different.
“The sound was horrible,” he said. He went to his roof, he said, and saw machine gun fire emanating from one of the helicopters. The gunfire and the sounds from the helicopters subsided around 4 a.m., he said.
Residents said the raid targeted a two-story house about a mile from the Turkish border, in an area that appeared to be surrounded by olive groves. The White Helmets said its first responders initially could not access the area because of the heavy “shelling and clashes” that preceded the U.S. operation. Helicopters left shortly after 3 a.m. local time, the group said in a statement.
Videos circulating on social media, which The Washington Post was not able to immediately verify, captured what appeared to be the raid and its aftermath. In one widely circulated video, the sound of heavy gunfire can be heard, as what appear to be muzzle flashes, possibly from a helicopter, are seen above the skyline. Other videos captured the sound of someone speaking in Arabic over a loudspeaker, telling children in the house to come out.
“The area is surrounded by land and air,” the person can be heard saying. “The children are without blame. If there are children, they should come to me.”
Mahmoud al-Sheikh, who works at an auto repair shop less than a mile from the house, said he did not know who lived there but often used to see “small children and women coming in and out.” There was nothing terribly extraordinary about the men in the house, he added, saying they did not outwardly match the description of hard-line Islamist fighters who often wore long beards.
At one point during the events, he heard someone saying, “Children and women leave, we are entering the house.”
Photographs purportedly showing the house, taken by a local journalist early Thursday, showed a section of the top floor partially collapsed, and damage to walls that had left rebar exposed. Pictures of the interior showed a sitting room in disarray, and other areas where blood and scattered debris were visible.
Idlib, a hilly, rural province in northwestern Syria, has been a bastion of opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for more than a decade. The province is home to millions of internally displaced people from other parts of Syria. Its cities, towns and villages are largely under the control of an Islamist militant group that was formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which is regarded as a terrorist group by the United States and other western powers.
HTS, which has recently tried to emphasize its credentials as a governing body, has waged a war against another militant group in Idlib called Hurras al-Din, which is currently affiliated with Al-Qaeda. There has been some overlap between the two groups: disaffected, hard-line HTS members in recent years have defected and joined Hurras al-Din.
There was no immediate indication Thursday that the U.S. raid had targeted HTS. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement Thursday that an HTS member had been unintentionally killed during the U.S. operation as a result of the armed clashes.
Fahim reported from Istanbul and Lamothe from Washington.
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