Baghdadi’s death: More details emerge from US raid

The US military operation that targeted ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi got underway on the ground in northwest Syria at 5:01 p.m. ET Saturday, according to a senior US defense official.

Baghdadi’s death was communicated by the special operations forces when they declared “jackpot” at 7:15 p.m. ET, the senior US defense official said. President Trump joined the national security team in the situation room as the operation got underway.

The official said six enemy fighters were killed in the raid and the 11 children, who were safely removed from the house, were turned over to a “responsible” party that had been identified. 

The tunnel where the ISIS leader detonated his suicide vest partially collapsed and the forces on the ground had to recover the remains from the rubble while being cautious about any improvised explosive devices, the official said. It was only when the US forces were out of harms way did the President tweet good news was coming.

A senior State Department official told reporters Monday that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) “played a key role” in the raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s compound.

The official also said the US has been “in close touch” with SDF Commander Gen. Mazloum Abdi “about all aspects of what we’re doing.”

The official said Mazloum’s statements about the raid were accurate.

President Trump tweeted a declassified photo of a military dog that participated in the raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s compound.

A US defense official told CNN that the dog suffered injuries from an electrocution and is recovering. 

In his tweet, Trump said that he could not share the name of the dog because that information is still classified.

Earlier today, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also declined to name the military dog who played a role in the raid. 

“We’re not releasing the name of the dog right now. The dog is still in theater. The dog, the K-9, the military working dog performed a tremendous service as they all do in a variety of situations. Slightly wounded and fully recovering but the dog is still in theater, returned to duty with its handler. So we are not going to release just yet photos or names of dogs or anything else,” Milley said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended President Trump’s decision not to notify Congressional leadership ahead of the US raid on ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

He went on to say that former President Barack Obama did exactly the same thing when al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed.  

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had an informant in ISIS who lead them to the location where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hiding, SDF spokesperson Mustafa Bali tells CNN.

The informant also obtained Baghdadi’s underwear and blood sample that was used for the DNA test to confirm his identity before the raid took place.

A senior State Department official told reporters Monday that the ISIS spokesperson Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir was killed by US forces in Aleppo province near Jarablus.

“He was killed very close to the northeast, very close to the Euphrates River, near Jarablus,” the official said. “He was killed by US forces.”

The official described al-Muhajir as both a spokesperson and “kind of a number two” to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader who was killed during a US raid.

Asked about President Trump’s comments on Sunday describing ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as “crying” and “whimpering” shortly before his death, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Gen. Mark Milley, said, “I don’t know what the source of that.”

Milley added he believed Trump had planned to talk to members of the unit that carried out the raid that resulted in Baghdadi’s death. 

“I assume it was talking directly to unit members,” Milley said of Trump’s comments. 

Milley said he had not yet spoken to members of the unit and had not heard that characterization himself.

On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said he also had not heard Baghdadi’s last moments characterized that way.

Farhan Haq, spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, acknowledged the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a statement today, saying the terrorist group “committed heinous crimes and brought tragedy and death to thousands of men, women and children.”

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said today that the US military will maintain a presence in Syria for the time being following the Baghdadi raid in order to protect oil fields from being seized by ISIS fighters.

Asked if this will mean the number of US troops will increase in Syria, Esper responded, “At the end of the day, we will be sending troops home.”

Asked to clarify if he means that the number of US troops in Syria will go up in order to run the operation to protect the oil, Esper responded, “No, no, no, at the end of the day, my expectation is it will be fewer than we have before.”

Pressed by CNN’s Barbara Starr on whether the US will also prevent any Russian or Syrian forces from gaining access to the oil, Esper said, “The short answer is yes, it presently does. Because in that case, we want to make sure that SDF does have access to the resources in order to guard the prisons, in order to arm their own troops, in order to assist us with the defeat-ISIS missions. So that’s our mission, is to secure the oil fields.”

Asked at a press briefing if the US military has video or photos of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s final moments, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We do have videos, photos.”

“We’re not prepared to release those…they’re going through a declassification process,” Milley said.

He added that the photos and videos would be released by the military in the coming days.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper praised President Trump’s “bold decision” when he ordered the US special forces operation that ended in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“There is no guarantee of success in an operation with this level of difficulty, and President Trump knew this when he made the bold decision to order the raid, confident in the expertise of our forces,” Esper said.

He said the service members conducted the raid with “incredible skill and professionalism,” and he noted that “not a single US service member was killed in this high-risk operation.”

Esper said Baghdadi’s death is a “devastating blow” for ISIS.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will brief the media at 1 p.m. ET from the Pentagon. 

The briefing comes after US forces cornered Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a two-hour nighttime raid. The ISIS leader “blew himself up” during the operation.

Baghdadi was one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.

The remains of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi have been buried at sea, according to two US defense officials.  

On Sunday, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he expected the US to follow the same protocol as al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who was killed in a 2011 raid in Pakistan by US Navy SEALs and buried at sea.

Appearing on MTP, O’Brien said Baghdadi’s “body will be disposed of properly.” Asked if the US would follow the same protocol as bin Laden, O’Brien said, “I would expect that to be the case.”

On the same day that an American raid killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a separate attack took out the group’s spokesman, according to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which coordinated with the US on the joint operation.

ISIS spokesman Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir was killed near Jarablus, in northern Syria, the SDF’s general commander Mazloum Abdi tweeted on Sunday.

SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel told CNN that al-Muhajir was killed on the “same day” as Baghdadi. A senior Iraqi military official also confirmed to CNN that two other ISIS leaders died alongside al-Muhajir.

A US official told CNN that al-Muhajir was likely dead, but could not confirm.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday expressed confidence that the US will be able to continue to gather intelligence despite largely withdrawing from Syria and cutting ties with the Kurds.

“I have enormous confidence that we’ll have intelligence professionals where we need them, we’ll be able to reach them,” Pompeo, who was the CIA director for more than a year, told Fox & Friends.

“I have a pretty good sense of how those operations, those intelligence operations, are conducted,” he said. “It’s complex, it’s sophisticated, it is broad, it is deep. “

Pompeo said the threat of radical Islamic extremism had not gone away, but that he was confident the US still had the intelligence it needed to “to undertake this absolutely vital mission for American national security.”

President Trump, speaking at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago, touted the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — but said “another President should have gotten him.”

“They’d been looking for him for a long time,” Trump said. “He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s dead … He’s dead as a doornail, and he didn’t die bravely either.”

Trump said killing Baghdadi was a top priority: He said that when officials would tell him about the deaths of other terrorists, he’d ask about the whereabouts of the ISIS leader.

“Another President should have gotten him,” he added.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons has criticized Trump for leaving top Democratic leaders in the dark about the Baghdadi raid.

“There is a long tradition of the President notifying leaders in Congress of both parties when there’s a sensitive operation underway,” Coons, who represents Delaware, told CNN’s John Berman on New Day.

“But to disrespect the Speaker of the House, who is in the direct line of succession to the President, and to not inform bipartisan leaders in Congress, to only inform a few Republicans, I think was just one more important norm of cooperation shattered by this President.” 

Among those who weren’t informed of the operation by the White House were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (all three are Democrats). The move to not notify notable leaders goes against the usual tradition for such high-profile operations and undercut praise for the risky mission. 

The President said the administration did not brief lawmakers due to a fear that they would leak information to the news media that could cost American lives.

“And I think the President should have the trust and confidence in our leaders in Congress to know that they would not have leaked sensitive details, certainly after the event,” Coons said Monday, adding that he thinks it was Trump who shared a “remarkable, even disturbing amount of detail about the operation” during his announcement of the raid. 

“When fighting ISIS and terrorism, we aren’t Democrats and Republicans. We’re Americans,” Coons said. 

Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan echoed Coons’ statement, saying “there’s a lot of traditions that go on when it comes to the executive branch notifying the legislative branch about these kinds of operations.”

She said the so-called Gang of Eight – the bi-partisan group of lawmakers who have access to the most highly classified information – should have been informed “so that it’s a bipartisan approach to understanding what our military is doing.”

“I just don’t think it sets the right tone and certainly doesn’t reflect what our forces on the ground would ever do,” Slotkin said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has defended the decision not to brief members of Congress about the raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“So there were only a handful of us that were dialed into this operation, myself and a handful of others, and then those, of course, who were executing the mission, in the run-up to this,” Pompeo told Fox and Friends.

Those involved in the operation had two priorities, Pompeo said, which included ensuring information security and executing the mission.

“We’ve been tracking this guy for a long time, we wanted to take no risk that anyone would ever compromise the operation, so we were very focused on information security,” Pompeo said. “Second, we wanted to make sure we were doing it right, and so we were focused on delivering the outcome that we got.”

“That’s what the American people should be focused on. It’s what President Trump and our team were focused on all of the days leading up to this mission,” he added.

Pompeo, who was in Kansas at the time of the raid, said he “would have loved to have been there,” but noted that he “was in close touch with the leaders who were in there.”

“State Department was fully engaged making sure we were delivering the things that we needed to for what was an amazing military operation that night, a remarkable turn of events which will have real impact all across the world,” Pompeo said.

President Donald Trump continues to take a victory lap on the Baghdadi raid. Touting the killing in addition to an all-time S&P 500 high, Trump tweeted: “We are stronger than ever before, with GREAT upward potential. Enjoy!”

Trump also commented on the Baghdadi operation while speaking to reporters at Andrews Air Force Base earlier this morning. He called the raid an “amazing display of intelligence and military power and coordination and getting along with people,” adding that he was considering releasing video footage of it.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham retweeted the President, adding, “#Genius,” an apparent reference to her statement slamming former chief of staff John Kelly’s comments over the weekend.

The daring special forces raid that killed the leader of ISIS cannot have come at a better moment for a crisis-haunted President Donald Trump, but he may have incited a bitter new turf war between the White House and Capitol Hill by failing to inform congressional leaders about the raid.

Beset by a deepening impeachment storm and fury among Republicans about his Syria withdrawal, Trump broke into America’s Sunday morning to announce an unequivocal win for the nation abroad.

He relished the demise of ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, playing the role of a ruthless commander-in-chief to silence critics of his impulsive foreign policy leadership.

“He was a sick and depraved man. And now he’s gone. Baghdadi was vicious and violent. And he died in a vicious and violent way … he was screaming, crying and whimpering. And he was scared out of his mind,” Trump said.

He also said the White House did not inform key Democrats on the Hill – including those leading the impeachment inquiry into him – about the raid ahead of time due to fears that they would leak the news. Trump wasn’t under an obligation to inform Democrats on the Hill, but the move goes against the usual tradition for such high-profile operations.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said criticized the move, saying “Russians but not top Congressional leaders were notified of the raid in advance” and that “the House must be briefed on this raid.”

Baghdadi’s death momentarily put Democrats who have been squeezing Trump incessantly with their impeachment inquiry on the back foot. While many praised the courage of the special forces operators, few of Trump’s domestic political foes were ready to give the President any credit.

Read all the latest on the impeachment inquiry here:

President Donald Trump answers questions before boarding Marine One while departing the White House on October 10, 2019 in Washington, DC.

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