thank you so much, ben wedeman for us in beirut. let s go now to cnn s sam kyle eye. he is on the turkish-syrian border, near where this operation was carried out. and many questioning now how al baghdadi came to be hiding so close to the turkish border there in idlib province, sam. reporter: yeah, remarkable place to have found him, again, echoes of the bin laden raid, which was deep inside pakistan, next to their office s academy. in this case, the world s most wanted man who s reportedly been killed according to u.s. officials hiding deep in al qaeda territory or al qaeda-dominated area. now the islamic state were bitter rivals of al qaeda, which indeed isis and al baghdadi split away from what was the al qaeda franchise, the nusra
dominated by al qaeda groups. elements of what was known as the al nusra front remain there in some force. they really are the dominant force there, natalie. it s also incredibly densely populated with hundreds of thousands of internal refugees who fled aleppo and other areas as a result of the russian and assad regime s bombardment, which in idlib has been continuing on an almost daily basis. so a highly complex battlefield environment. so then insert an american force. highly complex also in terms of the intelligence. now, it s conceivable, really, that the intelligence that led to al baghdadi must have come from people on the ground as much from signals intelligence, because he was actually in an area surrounded by unfriendly forces. al qaeda and the so-called islamic state split from each