US President Joe Biden announced Thursday the killing of ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim Al-Hashimi Al-Qurashi in an operation carried out by the US military in northern Syria on Wednesday.

In a statement, Biden confirmed that a US special forces counter-terrorism operation in northwest Syria targeted the ISIS leader, noting that more details about the operation will be announced in later statements on Thursday.

The US President claimed that the US forces have taken Abu Ibrahim Al-Hashimi Al-Qurashi "off the battlefield."

A senior US official said Al-Qurashi had blown himself up during a nighttime airborne raid by US special forces in northwestern Syria.

The bomb that Al-Qurashi detonated also killed members of his own family, including women and children, the official said.  

Only civilian victims

Al Mayadeen's correspondent, quoting local sources, reported that four helicopters belonging to the International Coalition carried out a landing operation near the town of Atma north of Idlib, which resulted in at least 13 civilian casualties, including women and children.

According to Sputnik, a number of elite US soldiers in the US army were injured during the confrontations.

The agency detailed that confrontations between US occupation forces and armed men controlling the area continued for hours in the vicinity of the Atma border area, the far northwest of Syria.

On their social media platforms, militants confirmed that all the victims of the airdrop were in fact civilians and no leader was among them.

Al-Qurashi replaced his predecessor, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, following the latter's killing in a similar raid in October 2019.