The secretive unit that took out Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
The USA’s most covert special ops unit has been at the heart of many successful missions against ISIS.
The covert mission to hunt down and kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi involved one of the most secret special operations units in the US military: Delta Force.
Modelled on Britain’s SAS, Delta Force, which has a classified group operating from Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, serves with an organisation known as the “Expeditionary Targeting Force”, set up to locate and eliminate the top members of Islamic State’s hierarchy.
About 200 commandos are based there, with Black Hawk helicopters, ready to launch a mission whenever “actionable intelligence” is provided giving the precise co-ordinates of a wanted ISIS terrorist.
President Trump indicated in his White House press conference that a large force was involved in the operation to target Baghdadi, including sailors, marines and air force personnel.
However, Delta Force was the spearhead group used to blast a hole in the outer part of the compound where Baghdadi was sleeping, entering the hide-out within seconds and opening fire.
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Along with the US Navy’s Seal Team 6, Delta Force, the US Army’s most secretive special operations unit, has been at the heart of successful missions against Isis in the past five years.
Founded in 1977 by Colonel Charlie Beckwith, a career US special forces officer, Delta Force follows the same formidable selection tests as the SAS.
Its full name is 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment – Delta, and is part of US Joint Special Operations Command, based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Delta Force has been used in covert combat missions around the globe, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Libya.
Delta Force has had a lower profile than Seal Team 6 whose exploits became world news when they flew by helicopter to a compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan in May 2011 and shot dead Osama bin Laden. The Pentagon does not normally even acknowledge the existence of Delta Force.
However, as with Seal 6 Team 6, Delta Force works closely with the CIA in building up intelligence on the location of key Isis leaders. CIA input was crucial in the search for Baghdadi’s compound.
When the 200-strong Expeditionary Targeting Force has sufficient intelligence to mount a covert operation, the commandos team up with the US Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers. The regiment flies Black Hawk helicopters fitted with noise-reduced rotors to approach targets without the giveaway thump-thump of normal helicopters, and they fly at tree-hopping altitude.
Delta Force has been used extensively in Syria since Isis set up its caliphate in 2015. Commandos from the unit were involved in a covert mission in May 2015 in eastern Syria aimed at capturing Abu Sayyaf, the so-called Isis oil minister in charge of the captured Syrian oil wells.
Sayyaf was killed in a fierce gunfight, but Delta Force operatives seized his wife who was to provide crucial intelligence information during later questioning.
Not every Delta Force mission has succeeded. The US Army unit led an attempt to rescue American and other foreign hostages held by Isis in Syria in 2014.
The hostages included James Foley, an American journalist, and Kayla Mueller, a US aid worker. The mission failed and both American hostages and others were subsequently killed by their ISIS captors, allegedly by the infamous British terror unit called “the Beatles”. Two of the “Beatles” are now in US custody after being removed from a prison in Syria guarded by the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Delta Force was also involved in a dramatic abduction in Tripoli, Libya, in 2014 when commandos seized Abu Ahmed Khattala, suspected of being one of the terrorists who launched an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11 2012. The US ambassador and three other American nationals were killed.
One of the unit’s most successful missions was against the terrorist leader who was eventually to be succeeded by Baghdadi.
In April 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in an operation involving a US air strike and Delta Force commandos. Baghdadi, who had joined al-Qaeda, took over and then transformed Zarqawi’s insurgency organisation into the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the forerunner of Isis.
The Times
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