Sarah Dadouch The Washington Post

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Dead: The ISIS terror group on Thursday announced the successor to its former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who U.S. officials said killed himself by detonating a suicide vest during a raid last week on his hiding place in northwest Syria.

When US forces found Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, he was not in some forgotten border town or remote patch of desert but in Syria's Idlib province, a place where Baghdadi surely knew he was surrounded by enemies, and eyes.

For the past five years, Syrian Kurds have stood alongside the United States in its effort to vanquish the Islamic State, in the process securing control over a vast area of Syria they hoped would form the nucleus of an autonomous Kurdish region.

The United States began withdrawing American troops from Syria's border with Turkey early Monday, in the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration was washing its hands of an explosive situation between the Turkish military and U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Dead: The ISIS terror group on Thursday announced the successor to its former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who U.S. officials said killed himself by detonating a suicide vest during a raid last week on his hiding place in northwest Syria.

When US forces found Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, he was not in some forgotten border town or remote patch of desert but in Syria's Idlib province, a place where Baghdadi surely knew he was surrounded by enemies, and eyes.

For the past five years, Syrian Kurds have stood alongside the United States in its effort to vanquish the Islamic State, in the process securing control over a vast area of Syria they hoped would form the nucleus of an autonomous Kurdish region.

The United States began withdrawing American troops from Syria's border with Turkey early Monday, in the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration was washing its hands of an explosive situation between the Turkish military and U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters.