detonated so hardware wouldn t get into any hands on the ground. do we think he, for instance, made the call for the attack in afghanistan, for instance, on our soldiers? reporter: it s a good question, one supposed to senior administration officials and to john kirby. while they re not drewing a direct line between al qureshi and that awful attack outside abby gate at the kabul airport last sum they re killed 13 american service members, they do say that that was conducted by isis-k, an affiliate of isis and ultimately he was the head of isis as we ve heard from some of the top counterterrorism officials in this country. is is has affiliates or offshoots in three dozen countries around the world. there have been concerns about a resurgence of isis in syria, and
we used to joke in the pentagon that the most dangerous job in the world was a number three guy at al qaeda. we killed that position so many times. but occasionally you get a big one. this is a big one. this is certainly not quite getting bin laden, but i d put ut in a top five kills we ve accomplished. lit rock the organization. but to your point, another leader will emerge. courtney, that s what i want to focus on here. now what in northwest syria? on one hand, here s someone who s been operating out of there for quite some time. does this at all create space in northwest syria in a positive way? reporter: one thing we need to keep in mind is ever since he came into this leadership position, isis has not had its own territory. they have not had their caliphate. they ve been trying to rebuild in that time and haven t been that successful.
the secretary s statement, these special operations forces conducted dozens of rehearsals to make sure that they could get this exactly right. mike breast? hi, mr. kirby. thanks for taking my question. i m hoping you can vo provid a little insight into where isis stands right now, the threat they pose between the raid at the prison two weeks ago and abdullah s assassination. where do things stand in syria as well as globally? well, i ll tell you what, they re leaderless today, and that s a significant blow. this is not something that we believe isis is going to be able to just get over real quickly and easily. that said, they are not the force that they were in 2014 as we all remember that their
that building, among them eight children. on the second floor, that s where the lieutenant to this isis leader had been living along side his wife. we heard from kirby that both of them engaged in a firefight with american special operations forces on the ground there, and at least one of their children is believed to have been killed in that firefight. we heard from secretary austin a short time ago, chuck, acknowledging that it is possible that some innocent civilians were harmed or even killed in this effort. but the details are pretty remarkable about this. at this safe house, we learned from u.s. officials that this isis leader, al qureshi, that he never left the home, that he was basically commanding isis global operations effectively through couriers. so a lot of new and remarkable details about it, not the least of which is that the u.s. forces there had to blow up their helicopter on the ground not after a hard landing but after a landing and it was determined to be unsafe to
you ve been listening to john kirby giving as many details as he can to the raid that took place earlier today. he s been briefing reporters, answering questions following the president s remarks this morning on the raid that took out isis top leader and his deputy. all of this comes as president biden is in new york city at this moment. he s addressing a major domestic issue that could pose a big political risk for democrats in the midterm, rising crime particularly in urban centers. more on, that but we re learning a lot more about this raid in north west syria. it resulted in the depth of the current top isis leader, abu ibrahim hashimi al qureshi. he s been referring to him as haji abdullah, believed to be his gaven name, blew himself up in the raid according to officials, killings himself and his family. according to a senior administration official, u.s. forces were on the ground for nearly two hours.