Synøve Andersson

For more than five years, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State (ISIS), orchestrated a reign of global terror across Iraq, Syria, and Europe before vanishing into the shadows after his territorial caliphate collapsed in 2019. Intelligence agencies hunted him across deserts and urban safehouses, offering a $25 million bounty for his capture. Believing he was safest hiding far from former ISIS strongholds, Baghdadi slipped into northwestern Syria’s Idlib province, a region controlled by rival militant factions and patrolled by Russian and Syrian forces. He took shelter inside a high-walled compound in the village of Barisha, just four miles from the Turkish border, surrounded by olive orchards and hidden beneath an elaborate network of reinforced underground tunnels. The intelligence breakthrough came from inside his own inner circle. In the summer of 2019, Iraqi intelligence interrogators and CIA analysts captured one of Baghdadi's trusted couriers and one of his wives, extracting critical location coordinates and travel routines. Working alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), intelligence operatives placed an undercover informant inside the Barisha compound, who reportedly stole a pair of Baghdadi's worn underwear and a sample of his blood so CIA geneticists could run a definitive DNA match against samples collected when Baghdadi was detained at Camp Bucca in Iraq in 2004. With his identity confirmed, US President Donald Trump authorized the mission, naming it Operation Kayla Mueller in honor of the 26-year-old American humanitarian aid worker who was kidnapped, tortured, and killed while held captive by Baghdadi in 2015. On the night of October 26, 2019, the strike force launched from an airfield in Erbil, Iraq. Operators from the US Army’s elite 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (Delta Force) and the 75th Ranger Regiment boarded eight MH-47 Chinook and MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters flown by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment ("Night Stalkers"). The flight required over an hour of low-altitude, nap-of-the-earth flying across northern Syria, requiring precise deconfliction clearances from Russian and Turkish military commanders to avoid surface-to-air missile fire. Just after midnight local time on October 27, the helicopters descended on the Barisha compound, engaging hostile militants who opened fire from the outer treeline. Rather than risk booby-trapped front doors, Delta operators executed an explosive wall breach. Demolition teams blew massive entry holes directly through the compound’s concrete exterior walls. Operators cleared the main house room by room, detaining several surrendered fighters while eliminating militants who refused to lay down their arms. Eleven young children inside the structure were safely escorted out of the line of fire by American troops. Cornered, Baghdadi fled downward into a subterranean escape tunnel beneath the compound, dragging two of his young children with him. Delta Force operators sent Conan, a decorated Belgian Malinois military working dog, down the pitch-black shaft to pursue him. Reaching the collapsed dead end of the tunnel with Conan closing in and American operators shouting surrender demands behind him, Baghdadi triggered a suicide explosive vest. The detonation collapsed the tunnel roof, killing Baghdadi and both children instantly. Conan was injured by exposed live electrical wires in the blast, but survived and later returned to active duty. Forensic teams cleared the rubble within minutes to verify the kill. Combat medics and biometric specialists extracted tissue samples from the remains inside the tunnel and ran a field DNA comparison using rapid-processing equipment on-site. Within fifteen minutes of the blast, genetic verification confirmed a 100% match to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. .