Islamic State leader killed during raid by US special forces in Syria

The pre-dawn attack on a house in the village of Atme, just south of the Turkish border, led to up to 13 casualties, among them women and children. It also resulted in the destruction of a US helicopter, which had been used to carry special forces troops from Erbil in Iraq.

Biden said the civilian casualties were caused when Qurayshi detonated a suicide vest and other explosives on the third floor of the building where he had taken refuge.

However, there was a significant discrepancy between the initial Pentagon report that eight children had been safely evacuated and two children were killed by the blast triggered by Qurayshi, and the accounts of first responders on the scene who say they found six children and four women dead.

US officials said the planners looked at the structural integrity of the building and decided that it would not collapse if Qurayshi blew himself up, though they had not anticipated he would rig the entire floor to explode.

US officials said that the US raiding squad came under fire from al-Qaida-affiliated militants as they were leaving and returned fire, killing two. Lister also questioned that account, saying the two men hit were members of Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the area. He said one was killed and the other is in hospital.

Biden watched the operation unfold through a video link from the White House. Officials said there were moments of tension, when one of the helicopters malfunctioned and had to be landed and then destroyed, and then when the special forces team called for family members to come out of the building, knowing there were children inside. One official described a wave of relief when children and other civilians were able to flee the first floor of the building

Medics who attended the aftermath said they found only three bodies. Others are believed to have been taken by townspeople. Photographs taken from inside the home appeared to show the impact of a suicide blast.

Separate photographs showed the third floor of the three-storey house partially collapsed. There appeared to be little damage to surrounding homes.

Residents of Atme were woken at about 3am by the sound of helicopters landing nearby. A man speaking Arabic with an Iraqi accent through a loudspeaker told the occupants of the house that they had 15 minutes to surrender.

After that time had elapsed, gunfire and explosions ripped through the night.

He is the fourth senior Isis leader to have been tracked down, captured or killed in Idlib province in the past two years.

The day after Baghdadi was assassinated, also in a US raid, his nominated replacement, Abu Hassan al-Muhajjir, was hit by an airstrike in Manbij. Last year, the IS deputy was handed over to Iraqi forces by Turkey after having been captured in Syria.

Syrian government forces and their main military backer, Russia, have carried out repeated attacks against jihadist and rebel groups in Idlib. However a ceasefire deal brokered almost two years ago by Moscow and Ankara, the two main foreign powers in the area, is still officially in place.