Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed himself after elite US troops cornered him during a raid in northwestern Syria on Saturday, US President Donald Trump said today. A senior US official informed Al-Monitor of Baghdadi’s death before the White House announcement, which came after months of the Pentagon probing near the militant group chief’s suspected hideout in the contested city of Idlib. 

Baghdadi, whom the United States had pursued without luck since first deploying American forces to Iraq to roll back the IS caliphate five years ago, detonated a suicide vest under the pressure of the special operations raid launched from Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, Trump said.

The official, speaking not for attribution, described the effort as a “complex airborne raid” led by US Army Delta Forces supported by intelligence collection by the CIA and the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Pentagon-backed group that served as the main fighting group for the American-led fight against IS.

Trump, who watched the raid on drone feeds in the White House Situation Room alongside Vice President Mike Pence and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, said Baghdadi died “whimpering, crying, and screaming all the way” as he ignited his suicide vest with three children in a dead-ended tunnel.