In a military raid by US special forces on a cave complex in northern Somalia on Wednesday night, Bilal al-Sudani, a senior leader of the Islamic State group, was killed, US officials said.
In a military raid by US special forces on a cave complex in northern Somalia on Wednesday night, Bilal al-Sudani, a senior leader of the “Islamic State” organization, was killed, US officials said.
Al-Sudani was killed in a shootout along with 10 other terrorists. There were no American casualties in the raid, US media sources said, emphasizing that there were also no civilian casualties – although officials later clarified that one of the soldiers had been bitten by a US Army dog.
The officials said President Joe Biden authorized the raid earlier this week after consulting with his national security staff. The American forces who carried out the raid practiced it many times in a facility simulating the target area – a technique similar to what US special operations forces did before the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden in an apartment complex in Pakistan.
US forces were preparing for the possibility of al-Sudani’s capture, the sources said, “but the hostile forces’ response to the operation resulted in his death.” The officials declined to say whether the timing of the operation indicated that there was an imminent threat of attack in the US.
“On January 25, at the order of the president, the US military conducted an attack operation in northern Somalia that resulted in the death of a number of ISIS members, including Bilal-al-Sudani, the leader of ISIS in Somalia and a key figure in the organization of ISIS,” Defense Minister Lloyd Austin said in a statement. “Al-Sudani was responsible for the growing presence of ISIS in Africa and the financing of the organization’s operations around the world, including in Afghanistan,” Austin added.