The US military has conducted a special operations raid targeting Daesh* leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, a Newsweek report says.
The raid, which took place Saturday, was approved by the president a week prior, the report says.
Iraqi intelligence agencies helped to locate Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the infamous former leader of daesh, Iraqi state TV cited a terror group expert as saying.
A high-ranking source in Iraqi intelligence confirmed that Baghdadi had been liquidated in Syria’s Idlib province, INA news agency reported.
Iraqi state TV said that it will air footage of the raid that killed Baghdadi.
A senior Pentagon official and a US Army official told Newsweek that Baghdadi was the target of a top-secret operation in Syria's Idlib province.
The US Army official said that Baghdadi was killed during the raid. The Pentagon source added that the department has "high confidence" that a high-value target killed during the raid was Baghdadi, but that further verification is underway.
The report notes that the raid took place in the Idlib province, currently controlled by Syrian Islamist militias, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham - the former Nusra Front - which clashed with Daesh in recent years.
The raid was authorized after the Joint Special Operations Command received "actionable intelligence," as the target location had been under surveillance for some time, the report says.
Earlier on Saturday, Trump posted a cryptic tweet, saying that "something very big has just happened," gathering more than 45,000 comments.
Something very big has just happened!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2019
Later that day, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley announced that Trump would make a "major statement" Sunday morning at 9 a.m. EST (1300 GMT), without providing further details.
*Daesh (ISIS/ISIL) is an international terrorist group which is banned in Russia.
