24 commandos, Black Hawks under fire, a gun-wielding terrorist’s wife and a suicide blast that threw bodies into the street: Inside the 1am Syria raid where special forces saved babies, had a two-hour gun fight with locals and left ‘coward’ ISIS boss’s body in his own home’s rubble
- Neighbors were woken by helicopters swooping out of the dark sky at just after one o’clock in the morning
- 24 US commandos quickly surrounded a three-story home in Atmeh, Syria, not far from the Turkish border
- The top floor was home and headquarters to ISIS chief Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and his family
- An Arabic voice could be heard through a bullhorn telling the residents to give themselves up
- Only 45 minutes after the raid began a suicide blast destroyed much of the top floor, killing al-Qurayshi
- Witnesses said it was so powerful that bodies were flung clear of the rubble
- An ISIS lieutenant and his wife opened fire from the second floor as the commandoes moved inÂ
- From start to finish the whole operation took two hours. First responders said that 13 people died in allÂ
- WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGESÂ
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