Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced that Turkish forces captured the wife of former Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was recently killed in a raid by US special forces, in an operation in Syria, according to Turkish media reports.
“The US killed al-Baghdadi in a tunnel. I am revealing this information for the first time: We captured al-Baghdadi’s wife but did not make a fuss about it. Likewise, we captured his sister and brother-in-law in Syria,” Erdoğan said during a ceremony at Ankara University in the Turkish capital.
Baghdadi killed himself last month when cornered in a tunnel during a raid by US special forces in northwestern Syria. ISIL, in an audiotape posted online later, confirmed that its leader had died and vowed revenge against the United States.
US President Donald Trump announced that al-Baghdadi had been killed in a late-night raid in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province.
Baghdadi’s sister, Rasmiya Awad, 65, her husband and daughter-in-law were detained in a raid near Azaz, a Turkish-controlled Syrian town near the border on Nov. 4 and subsequently arrested.