美国军方对其最有价值的目标之一——伊斯兰国激进组织领导人阿布·贝克尔·巴格达迪——进行了一次特别行动袭击，新闻周刊已经学会了。唐纳德·特朗普总统在任务开始前将近一周批准了这项任务。

周六有报道称，美国军用直升机在叙利亚西北部伊德利卜省上空飞行，一名熟悉此次行动的五角大楼高级官员和一名了解此事的军方官员告诉记者新闻周刊巴格达迪是该国伊斯兰主义主导的反对派最后一个堡垒的绝密行动的目标，该派别近年来与伊斯兰国发生冲突。

一名了解行动结果的美国陆军官员告诉记者新闻周刊巴格达迪在突袭中被击毙，国防部告诉白宫，他们“高度信任”被击毙的高价值目标是巴格达迪，但进一步的验证仍在等待脱氧核糖核酸和生物特征测试。五角大楼高级官员说，美军进入伊德利卜巴里沙村的大院时发生了短暂交火，巴格达迪随后引爆了一件自杀式背心自杀。家人都在场。根据五角大楼的消息来源，袭击中没有儿童受伤，但两名巴格达迪的妻子在引爆自己的爆炸背心后丧生。

据知情人士透露，联合特种作战司令部三角洲小组的成员在收到可采取行动的情报后，执行了周六的高级别行动。特种作战部队突袭的地点已经被监视了一段时间。

五角大楼高级官员告诉记者新闻周刊巴格达迪所在的大院随后遭到空袭，以防止该地成为领导人的圣地。这位官员说，土耳其是支持当地叛乱分子的北约盟友，在行动前没有得到通知。

周六晚上，手术结束后，特朗普总统在推特上写道:“刚刚发生了一件大事！”白宫稍后宣布，总统将于周日上午9点发表“重要声明”

高价值目标:这张2014年7月5日的照片来自一段由富尔汗媒体发布的宣传视频，据称该视频显示伊斯兰国(伊斯兰国)激进组织领导人阿布·巴克尔·巴格达迪(Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi)在激进控制的伊拉克北部城市摩苏尔的一座清真寺向穆斯林礼拜者讲话。巴格达迪于2014年6月29日宣布成立一个横跨叙利亚和伊拉克的“哈里发”，据称他在社交媒体发布的视频中命令所有穆斯林服从他。

巴格达迪是伊拉克国民，是一名极端保守的教士，在2003年推翻伊拉克总统萨达姆·侯赛因的入侵后，他积极参与了针对美国军队的伊斯兰叛乱。他被美军关押在阿布格莱布和布卡营的拘留中心，在那里，许多未来的圣战领导人在被军事拘留期间相互摩擦。

他后来加入了伊拉克的基地组织，在这个暴力组织与其他组织合并形成伊拉克伊斯兰国的过程中，他的地位不断上升，并最终在2010年继承了该组织的领导权，当时他的前任在一次美伊联合行动中丧生。随着该组织利用美国的军事撤出进一步扩张，他在2013年将该组织更名为伊拉克伊斯兰国和黎凡特(又称黎凡特)，更广为人知的是伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国(ISIS)，寻求扩张到邻国叙利亚，那里正爆发内战。

巴格达迪的部队在伊拉克和叙利亚都取得了闪电般的胜利，2014年，他在伊拉克第二大城市摩苏尔的大努里清真寺宣布他的组织为全球哈里发，这是他作为伊斯兰国领导人唯一为人所知的公开露面。从那时起，该组织被正式称为伊斯兰国，不仅因为在该地区犯下的暴行，还因为对西方平民的高调袭击，开始引起世界的关注。

美国通过支持试图推翻巴沙尔·阿萨德总统的组织参与叙利亚的起义，这次起义也得到了土耳其和其他地区大国的支持。五角大楼开始通过与库尔德人领导的叙利亚民主力量合作来重新调整自己。随着伊斯兰国日益强大，伊斯兰主义者超过反对派，俄罗斯与伊朗一道支持阿萨德对抗这些派别。

由叙利亚政府和叙利亚民主力量领导的敌对运动旨在击败伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国。伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国开始在国外发起血腥袭击，袭击法国、德国、英国和其他国家。在美国，至少三起大规模屠杀的肇事者宣称他们效忠于伊斯兰国。

然而，随着以美国为首的联盟、伊朗和俄罗斯等国际大国追捕巴格达迪，该组织近年来在伊拉克和叙利亚都开始失势。尽管关于他的命运和下落有各种各样相互矛盾的报道，但没有一个政府承认任何具体的信息。

这些报道中最持久的涉及到他在所谓的半岛电视台地区。曾经是伊斯兰国活动的温床，该地区经常被描述为健康状况不佳。该地区被美国支持的叙利亚民主力量占领——然而巴格达迪却不见踪影。

“巴格达迪在叙利亚遵循他在伊拉克和叙利亚之间的假定生活模式，”一名前高级反恐官员告诉记者，他跟踪并支持抓捕从巴基斯坦前往伊拉克和土耳其的特工新闻周刊。“如果他死了，那将是对伊斯兰国的巨大打击，尤其是如果其他高级领导人在这次行动中丧生。”

就在今年2月，俄罗斯总参谋部主要情报部门负责人伊戈尔·科斯图科夫中将告诉国营塔斯社，巴格达迪“下落不明”，但是”他绝对不在伊德利卜。“该网站是哈亚特·塔里尔·沙姆(Hayat Tahrir al-Sham)的行动基地，这是一个与基地组织前努斯拉阵线(Nusra Front)有联系的圣战组织，该阵线由巴格达迪的前同伙阿布·穆罕默德·约拉尼(Abu Mohammed al-Jolani)领导，他拒绝加入伊斯兰国，此举在激进组织之间造成了重大分歧。

阿萨德本人在一次罕见的访问中被看到在周一发布的录像中被带到伊德利布省的前线。这位叙利亚领导人告诉他的部队，“伊德利布战役是决定性地结束整个叙利亚混乱和恐怖主义的核心”，并发誓要击败那里的一系列反叛组织，同时与库尔德人领导的部队合作，反对土耳其人领导的任何进一步推进叙利亚北部的企图。

面对政府及其盟友在全国范围内的挫败，一些叙利亚反叛团体选择在土耳其的支持下重组自己。安卡拉动员这些战斗人员与库尔德人民保护部队(YPG)作战，该部队是叙利亚民主力量的主要组成部分，被土耳其视为恐怖组织，因为据称与被禁止的库尔德斯坦工人党(PKK)有联系。

尽管特朗普已经从叙利亚北部撤出美国特种部队，但他呼吁一些部队留在叙利亚东部的其他地方，那里的大部分石油储备仍在库尔德人主导的控制之下。有人看到一支美国军用车辆车队在前往德尔祖尔省东部的途中，穿过卡米什利市。

在与美国和俄罗斯达成背靠背协议后，土耳其已停止入侵。美国和俄罗斯寻求恢复阿萨德在该国北部边境的权力，并推动YPG撤军。这一进程仍在继续，尽管仍有报道称这两个派别之间存在零星暴力，一些美国退出的批评者担心这可能会给伊斯兰国一个重新崛起的机会。

当被问及巴格达迪的死会如何影响美国撤军时，这位前高级反恐官员告诉记者新闻周刊“如果你要离开，你想在离开之前找到你的目标。”

联合特种作战司令部(Joint Special Operations Command)位于北卡罗来纳州的美国陆军基地布拉格堡之外，是美国特种作战司令部的一个次统一司令部。由美国空军中将斯科特·a·豪威尔领导的司令部负责监督海军特种作战发展小组和三角洲特种部队第一作战分遣队等特殊任务单位，在2011年5月杀死基地组织领导人奥萨马·本·laden⁠—and三角洲部队的袭击中，这两个单位被公众称为海豹突击队Six⁠—involved。

联系人新闻周刊在国家安全委员会和国防部公布之前，没有回复。

TRUMP APPROVES SPECIAL OPS RAID TARGETING ISIS LEADER BAGHDADI, MILITARY SAYS HE'S DEAD

The United States military has conducted a special operations raid targeting one of its most high-value targets, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), Newsweek has learned. President Donald Trump approved the mission nearly a week before it took place.

Amid reports Saturday of U.S. military helicopters over the Syria's northwestern Idlib province, a senior Pentagon official familiar with the operation and Army official briefed on the matter told Newsweek that Baghdadi was the target of the top-secret operation in the last bastion of the country's Islamist-dominated opposition, a faction that has clashed with ISIS in recent years.

A U.S. Army official briefed on the results of the operation told Newsweek that Baghdadi was killed in the raid, and the Defense Department told the White House they have "high confidence" that the high-value target killed was Baghdadi, but further verification is pending DNA and biometric testing. The senior Pentagon official said there was a brief firefight when U.S. forces entered the compound in Idlib's Barisha village and that Baghdadi then killed himself by detonating a suicide vest. Family members were present. According to Pentagon sources, no children were harmed in the raid but two Baghdadi wives were killed after detonating their own explosive vests.

Members of the Joint Special Operations Command's Delta Team carried out Saturday's high-level operation after receiving actionable intelligence, according to sources familiar with the operation. The location raided by special operations troops had been under surveillance for some time.

The senior Pentagon official told Newsweek that the compound in which Baghdadi was located was then taken out with an airstrike in order to prevent the site from becoming a shrine to the leader. Turkey, a NATO ally backing local insurgents, was not notified prior to the operation, the official said.

On Saturday night, after the operation had concluded, President Trump tweeted: "Something very big has just happened!" The White House announced later that the president will make a "major statement" Sunday at 9:00 a.m.

High-value target: This July 5, 2014 photo is taken from a propaganda video released by al-Furqan Media allegedly showing the leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) militant group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aka Caliph Ibrahim, addressing Muslim worshippers at a mosque in the militant-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Baghdadi, who on June 29, 2014, proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling Syria and Iraq, purportedly ordered all Muslims to obey him in the video released on social media.

Baghdadi, an Iraqi national, is an ultraconservative cleric who became active in the Islamist insurgency against U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. He was held by U.S. forces in the detention centers of Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, where a number of future jihadi leaders rubbed shoulders while in military custody.

He went on to join Al-Qaeda in Iraq, rising up the ranks of the violent group as it merged with others to form the Islamic State of Iraq and eventually inherited its leadership in 2010, when his predecessor was killed in a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation. As the group took advantage of a U.S. military exit to further expand, he renamed the group to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham—or the Levant—better known as ISIS, in 2013, seeking to expand to neighboring Syria, where a civil war was raging.

Baghdadi's forces made lightning gains across both Iraq and Syria, and in 2014 he declared his group a global caliphate from the Grand Al-Nuri Mosque in Iraq's second city of Mosul in his only known public appearance as ISIS leader. Officially known from then on simply as the Islamic State, the group began to grab world attention not only for atrocities committed across the region, but in high-profile strikes on civilians in the West as well.

The United States involved itself in Syria by backing groups trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in an uprising also supported by Turkey and other regional powers. The Pentagon began to realign itself by partnering with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as ISIS grew increasingly powerful, Islamists overtook the opposition and Russia joined Iran in backing Assad against these factions.

Rival campaigns led by the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Force were launched to defeat ISIS, which began to lash out abroad with bloody attacks in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and beyond. The perpetrators of at least three mass killings in the U.S. professed their allegiance to ISIS.

The group began to lose ground in both Iraq and Syria in recent years, however, with a U.S.-led coalition, Iran and Russia among the international powers hunting for Baghdadi. Though various, conflicting reports have been offered as to his fate and whereabouts, no single government has acknowledged any concrete information.

The most persistent of these reports involved him being in the so-called Jazeera region. Once a hotbed for ISIS activities, the area was often described as being in poor health condition. The region was seized by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces—yet Baghdadi was nowhere to be seen.

"Baghdadi being in Syria follows his presumed pattern of life operating between Iraq and Syria," a former senior counterterrorism official, who has tracked and supported the capture of operatives traveling from Pakistan to Iraq and Turkey, told Newsweek. "If he is dead, that would be a tremendous blow to ISIS, especially if other seniors leaders were killed during this operation."

As recent as February, Vice-Admiral Igor Kostyukov, head of the Russian general staff's Main Intelligence Department, told the state-run Tass news agency that Baghdadi's "whereabouts are unknown," but "he is definitely not in Idlib." The site is the base of operations for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a rival jihadi group with ties to Al-Qaeda's former Nusra Front, headed by Baghdadi's former associate, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who refused to join ISIS in a move that created a major rift among the militant groups.

Assad himself was seen on a rare visit to the frontlines of Idlib province in footage released Monday. The Syrian leader told his troops "that the Idlib battle is the core to decisively end chaos and terrorism in all of Syria" and vowed to defeat the array of rebel groups there while also teaming up with Kurdish-led forces against any Turkish-led attempts to push further into northern Syria.

Facing nationwide defeats at the hands of the government and its allies, a number of Syrian rebel groups have opted to reorganize themselves with the support of Turkey. Ankara has mobilized these fighters to battle the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey due to alleged links to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Though Trump has withdrawn U.S. Special Forces from northern Syria, he has called for some troops to remain elsewhere in eastern Syria, where much of the country's oil reserves remain under Kurdish-led control. A convoy of U.S. military vehicles was seen rolling through the city of Qamishli on its way to eastern Deir Ezzor province.

Turkey has since halted its incursion following back-to-back deals with the U.S. and Russia, which has sought to restore Assad's authority at the country's northern border and facilitate a YPG withdrawal. This process remains ongoing, though reports remain of sporadic violence between the two factions, something that some critics of the U.S. exit worried may give ISIS a chance to resurge.

Asked how Baghdadi's death may affect the U.S. withdrawal, the former senior counterterrorism official told Newsweek, "If you are leaving you want to try to find your targets before you leave."

The Joint Special Operations Command, out of U.S. Army base Fort Bragg in North Carolina, is a sub-unified command of the U.S. Special Operations Command. Led by U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Scott A. Howell, the command oversees special mission units such as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group and 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, known to the public as SEAL Team Six⁠—involved in the May 2011 raid that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden⁠—and Delta Force, respectively.

Contacted by Newsweek, no reply was returned before publication from neither the National Security Council nor the Department of Defense.