routine in boulder, colorado, you better be nailing it. this is cnn breaking news. >> i'm paula newton at cnn center in atlanta, where we are following major breaking news this hour. the international manhunt for isis leader abu bakr al baghdadi just took a very dramatic turn. cnn can now confirm that u.s. special forces have launched an operation targeting al baghdadi after receiving crucial cia intelligence on his possible location in northwest syria. now, president trump is expected to make a major announcement on sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. eastern. an administration official says the announcement is foreign policy related. that's all we know right now.

al baghdadi has been in hiding for the past five years. ever since he stood in the great mosque in mosul, iraq in 2014 and proclaimed the isis caliphate. cnn pentagon reporter ryan brown has the latest from washington. and suffice it to say, ryan, these are the kinds of tips certainly that those special forces look for. what more do you know about the operation as it's under way? >> reporter: well, very few details about the actual operation have become known at this time. of course that's not untypical in such a high-risk, high-value target operation such as this. now, it's interesting that it took place in northwest syria, where actually the u.s. military does not have much of a presence. of course there's been a large debate in washington recently about the military presence in syria, but that's mostly in the country's east. in the northwest there are actually very little u.s. military presence on the ground. and so the ability to find intelligence on baghdadi given the variety of groups, many of

them extremist groups that have kind of taken refuge in northwest syria, you would imagine it was an extremely difficult operation to locate, fix his location and then launch a ground military operation to attempt to apprehend him. now, of course these operations are launched and often verification of the identity of the target takes? time. we believe that process is still ongoing. but given that the white house is making this major announcement tomorrow morning it's safe to say that they are fairly confident in their targeting procedures that they knew who they were going after when this elite special operations mission was launched. >> yeah. and we can certainly see obviously that it would be familiar in terms of the kind of covert operations that they have ongoing in syria. and ryan, we'll look no further than a tweet from the president at 9:00 p.m. this evening saying something very big has just happened, exclamation mark. we have no further details from him right now.

ryan, i know you'll continue to keep us up to date with this. please come back to us if you have any more information as this operation is ongoing in northwest syria. i now want to bring in bob baer who of course has been following this story with us. bob, in terms of the way you've been analyzing this for us really over the last few years since al baghdadi took the pulpit there in mosul and declared his caliphate, how significant would this be if they believed they at least know his location now inside syria? >> well, for the trump administration this would be a great breakthrough after the humiliation of leaving syria the way he did and returning. this foreign policy has been a disaster, but if we can actually grab or kill baghdadi, it would be an enormous success for donald trump. the fact that he could have been or is in northwest syria is

predictable. the area around idlib is still controlled by islamic groups that sympathize with him if not islamic state groups. so the story sounding plausible. but if the president's going to go live tomorrow morning at 9:00, they're pretty sure that they got the guy or they know where he is. >> that they know where he is, which of course is significant. and bob, if you could talk to us a little about that. how many times have we been down this road before, where there has been intelligence that they thought perhaps they knew where he was, that he might have been injured, in ill health? and yet we had a message, right? just a few weeks ago from al baghdadi encouraging the isis caliphate to continue and for those isis fighters to continue without him. >> well, what baghdadi knew for certain is that he had to stay off telephones and any communications, electronic communications. he had to get away. like mullah omar in afghanistan.

simply go underground, stay away from e-mail, telephone calls, and the rest of it. and you know, it's significant, especially now, because so many islamic state prisoners have escaped, possibly up to 800. they're talking about reforming. to have their leader taken out in whatever way at this time would be demoralizing obviously for the islamic state. you know, this would be a very crucial, important operation in that part of the world. >> in terms of what's going on in that part of the world right now as you just mentioned, there is a lot of confusion over foreign policy there. certainly president trump will have been briefed on a lot of these covert operations over the last couple years to try to find al baghdadi and bring him to justice. in terms of what's going on on the ground now in syria, how much more complicated does that make an operation like this? >> very. because you're going to have to cross a lot of lines. clearly the s.e.a.l.s or delta

force could do this a covert operation, get into western syria. there is no anti-aircraft to speak of. they could do it stealthily and get in. you know, but i think what we're seeing is pretty much the defeat of islamic groups. and it's a matter of time before syria is carved up between turkey, russia, and iran. and you know, these groups, they were very violent and they have obviously failed, you know, at the very least to set up a caliphate or any other form of government. it's the end, pretty close, to the syrian resistance. >> to the syrian resistance. but the savagery that we saw isis unleashed, really unprecedented in modern times in terms of the way they also used social media propaganda to really terrorize people everywhere. bob, you know cnn has brought us the stories, we've had reporters there in the field with those

isis prisoners and in many cases their families being absolutely defiant. you know, is it naive to think that capturing one leader, that finding one leader and bringing perhaps his leadership to an end, that that would really bring an end to this kind of an isis group? >> oh, you're absolutely right. no. these groups do not need a spiritual leader, not like shia muslims that do. these groups can pick up new leaders all the time. baghdadi replaced zarqawi, for instance. zarqawi had no clerical standing. it doesn't really matter. and as we saw the islamic state continued to fight on even after he was on the run. so i totally agree with you. the whole idea of this very radicalized salafi islam is not going to go away as long as there's political turmoil in the middle east, which in our lifetime i can't ever see that going away. so some form of group is going to keep popping up.

i don't think it's ever getting much bigger but it's always going to be very, very dangerous, and right now it's a big threat to europe with all these prisoners getting out. >> and as you're speaking, bob, we are seeing pictures of baghdadi from that moment there in 2014. chilling to think what happened in the years after him speaking there on that pulpit. bob, i know you're going to stay with us. thanks so much for your expertise. we will come back to you very soon. in the meantime, though, i want to go to cnn's nic paton-walsh. he joins us from northern iraq. and nic, as we've been saying, this is an operation, right? in northwest syria. special operation. the president clearly excited about what the outcome may be, saying something very big has happened. but give us an indication of how difficult it has been to really track this man down because we've had a lot of false alarms before. >> yeah. i mean, look, you have to -- the most important part of what you've just said strategically here is northwestern syria. that is not a part of syria

where the united states has a lot of access. now, if you're trying to think of a place where for example you might want to hide yourself were you abu bakr al baghdadi, then idlib province is a well-known area of northwestern syria where there are substantial numbers of al qaeda-affiliated jihadists. not known necessarily to be an isis stronghold. far from it, in fact, as the isis affiliates who've grown up there and been considered a substantial threat to the west by many intelligence officials i've been speaking to over the years. but the complexity about bakr al baghdadi has been since that mosque appearance publicly there's only been one other videotaped appearance of him and that was april. now, if you were, for example, launching a raid into northwestern syria, you'd be going into frankly the sort of snake's pit, if you like, of al qaeda, an area where there are millions of civilians under bombardment by the russian air force, by the syrian regime. this is the new kind of flash-point in the next phase of syria's war. we've seen this mess play out

between the turkish forces and syrian kurdish forces. but if it's northwestern syria we're talking about, and i am speculating here as to the location of this raid, then if i were abu bakr al baghdadi, i would be looking to hide myself amongst sympathetic jihadis, possibly in an area like that. that's speculation. as of course is exactly what the u.s. commander in chief president donald trump's speech later on today going to be about. but i have to tell you there's no accident we're seeing this kind of level of pageantry laid out and this sort of eight-hour drumbeat, possibly longer, until that final announcement. it's almost inevitable what it will end up being. the question is how was this raid necessarily launched and what was its actual outcome? it would have been extraordinarily difficult for the united states to insert themselves into idlib. they would have had to probably deconflict with their turkish ally across the border, who is a fractious ally to say the least, who frankly had been ignoring american entreaties for the past week or so to not attack the syrian kurds. so with that happening too you

have the possibility that the russians may well have had activity in the airspace too around an area like that and then of course the syrian regime who think all of syria should be under their control and may well have wondered quite what was happening in those hours too. so entirely unclear the exact location of whatever this was occurred. but the important part to remember is exactly the kind of pageantry we've seen like this. we've not had a moment until this point since isis kind of first began to pull itself together. we watched that happen ourselves in southern turkey in late 2013. there's been no moment since baghdadi came to the fore where we've had this level of suggestion that he may be deceased. as you heard from bob there, though, the death of abu bakr al baghdadi, this is a man who began fighting the u.s. presence, military presence in iraq, who was held in kambuka, a u.s. facility there, radicalized over time, and then essentially became the figurehead of the islamic state of iraq in syria,

which was formerly the islamic state of iraq. they have this extraordinary youtube video they showed their militants breaking down the befrm that acted as the border between iraq and syria essentially saying this is our caliphate, this is the area between iraq and syria which we now control. back then it was a tiny amount of land but it moved very fast over time with baghdadi's leadership. because of the nature of how that organization worked, nobody knows exactly what shots he was calling. nobody knows how integral he was to the day-to-day procedure. the insurgency learned a lot while it was in iraq about how the americans can pick out leaders during night raids, one by one, from middle level to senior level making it hard to continue a chain of command. i think most of the estimates were that we were likely to see sort of the next phase of that particular insurgency create itself so that if one leader was taken out it would continue to function. and we've seen that happen over the years as u.s. drone strikes have repeatedly taken out isis

leaders. now, if it is the case that abu bakr al baghdadi has been caught in this raid, and we know nothing about that apart from the fact that donald trump is due to make a speech at some point in the next ten hours, he's tweeted that something very big has happened. now, obviously in the u.s. commander in chief's mind a lot of things are very big in his mind, so we don't know what that means. but certainly the pageantry i had i we're seeing from various u.s. officials around this would suggest something substantial is about to be announced. the point is whether baghdadi's death is a major -- symbolically, yes, because they've always like al qaeda beforehand felt the kind of catch me if you can leader gave them a sense of strength. it didn't work with bin laden and after his death al qaeda went quiet and they reconstituted themselves. the symbolic blow of bin laden being kimd in that raid in abbottabad, he was hiding in

plain sight under the pakistani military there, very clearly somebody who was quite happy to live out the rest of his days in a massive villa there. the fact he was actually found after years of painstaking work by the cia and u.s. special forces in a very daring raid showed frankly the priems of american military power intelligence over that small but persistent terrorist organization. baghdadi similarly i think was trying to create a similar mystique about himself to be the man that nobody could find. now, i know that back in may of 2018 we reported that the americans believed he had been badly injured in an air strike near raqqa and that had taken him out of his functional capabilities for about five months or so. it was unclear who carried that particular air strike out. but then he did go quiet for a period of time until we saw that video emerge in april of this year, where we saw baghdadi sat

cross-legged looking reasonably healthy. if you imagine his isis fighters at that particular time a lot of them stuck in barghouz dealing with the last bloody emace yailted chapter of isis under intense fire not having enough food. there he was quite rotund, quite jovial and seeming to dispense orders about the various wilayat he felt -- that's sort of the phrase for regions of the islamic caliphate and asking how they were going, suggesting a global organization. now, the important part about baghdadi is his symbolism in that it didn't seem like bin laden, he was a man sat there with a huge control deck -- i say was. forgive me. we don't know if that's the case. he was a man sat there with a control deck touching the various levers of power and work out where a raid or an operation would next occur. he was a man of symbolism and in fact the order from adnani, his former spokesperson, media boss, to all the various cells that wanted to see themselves attached to this isis brand, was to go forward and do what you can. and then subsequently isis would

claim responsibility rather than being involved in the planning stage. that made it very difficult to stop isis operation because all he frankly needed was somebody with some mental health problems in a different part of europe who would decide to hatch some extraordinary outrageous horrifying plot, do it, and then subsequently isis would say we were involved in that. that made baghdadi's symbolism significantly more potent because they were about the ideology, they were about the online videos and they were about the idea that you could essentially inspire people globally to do these sort of things, paula. >> and that's the reason that the video that we're looking at right now from april was all the more depressing for those who were trying to chase him and trying to hunt him down for awful those months, because they thought that perhaps he had been in some way, shape or form at least seriously injured. and nic, in terms of him and his symbolic nature, i know what you're saying there. this was just so achblg, what they did. it was unbelievable scenes. and use the a very highly organized social media arm, a media arm to really spread their

terror like a virus that we have not seen. is there any sense, though, that again, isis can reconstitute itself at least in that way, even if the issue of the caliphate is now perhaps gone? i have been very struck by the reporting that you and others at cnn have brought bus the defiance, the very defiance of those isis fighters even if they are in prison right now. and of course there are reports that where you are in iraq, that isis continues to try to reconstitute itself. >> reporter: yeah, i mean, look. there's lots of different ways to interpret that. the propaganda machine was extremely efficient. it was extremely brutal. it had no holds barred about what it was willing to show people about what isis would do to the people considered to be its enemies, and that was an absolute deliberate choice. that was perhaps from what we understand from speaking to the beatles, their sort of british jihadists who apparently are now in u.s. custody, kota and al shafi, not everybody necessarily agreed about the level of brutality which isis were willing to show, but that was

part of the idea. that was part of the message. and there were some who say what they were effectively doing was after years of brutality in the syrian civil war inflicted upon sunnis in the north and other parts of syria they were coming forward and saying we are cape avl similar military brutality. there are others who say part of this strategy was to create extraordinary distance between those who are followers of isis and the rest of the world. one of the broad failings of all of this is that they managed to create themselves as so much of the other, people who we simply can't seem to understand how people would get behind such a radical, brutal ideology. but never ever bothered to really work out what their actual human grievances were. a lot of isis stems from the discontent of sunnis in parts of iraq and syria who'd been bombed, who'd been disenfranchised, who feel totally marginalized and then found themselves actually welcoming a group like isis to provide some sort of stability or at least rules, at least some sense of military protection. none of this excuses what they did, but the broad failing you

might argue, even now, if we are in a conversation where we wonder whether baghdadi might be dead we're trying to work out exactly what isis managed to pull off and the big failing of the west has been to try to work out where initially they came from. and part of the effectiveness of isis at preventing that conversation was to make themselves quite so horrifying, make themselves quite so disgusting to the uninformed viewers. >> nic, pause that thought for just a second because we do have more news here into cnn. again, i want to remind everyone that we're covering a u.s. military special operations force that went in apparently to northwestern syria to hunt down the man you see there, the isis leader, al baghdadi. cnn pentagon reporter ryan browne has more now from washington. what more are you learning, ryan? >> reporter: well, we're learning from two sources now that baghdadi was believed killed in this u.s. special operations raid in northwest syria. but they're still conducting the necessary verification, dna testing, that sort of procedure,

to confirm that it was in fact he who was killed. but we are told that the current assessment from the u.s. military is that he was in fact killed in this operation, this daring raid into northwest syria, an area of syria the u.s. military rarely operates in. and at least one official is telling us that it appears that baghdadi may have detonated some kind of explosives, possibly a suicide vest, to avoid being captured. and that of course -- if that is in fact true that would of course complicate the process of identifying him as the u.s. military gathers evidence at the site of this location. but again, it's hard to downplay how dangerous, how complicated such a raid would be. unlike eastern syria where the u.s. military has operated regularly, northwest syria has been an area that the u.s. has not typically operated in save for a few drone strikes in the past. you have russians often operating there. you have the regime operating there. you have various extremist

groups, various rebel groups operating there. so to insert a u.s. special operations team into that area to conduct such a high-profile raid, they must have had high confidence that baghdadi was in fact there and that it was worth the risk, that the target was worth the risk of launching such an operation. >> as you're speaking many of us thinking back to barack obama and the moment in the situation room when they had to make a decision on whether or not that was osama bin laden. again, that was pakistan and again very crucial that they did not tip off anyone in pakistan as to what was going on. ryan, i'm going to let you go and news gather some more. i'm sure you'll have more information for us. we're going to turn now back to nic paton-walsh who is in northern iraq. and nic, i'm going to go through some of the nuts and bolts with you in a minute. but please just put it into context for us. there is now a possibility, at least two u.s. sources telling cnn, that al baghdadi could have been killed in this raid.

>> reporter: obviously an extraordinary moment for u.s. foreign policy, for those many hundreds, thousands of individuals whose lives have been ended, families ruined, people who lived through extraordinary trauma experiencing -- often being made to watch brutality which was not really seen in modern times, possibly since the second world war. and the fact that the man who was the ideological figurehead of that, if you like to say spiritual, if you can call it that, leader of that movement now is believed to have been killed is a seismic moment certainly for anybody who's watched this terror group grow and the damage it's caused to the notion of a moderate way of life here in the middle east and the damage it's caused in european capitals for those who've been targeted by a butcher's knife or a bomb anywhere between paris to paris to moscow to the united states.

this is an extraordinary weighty moment to see that the man who was the figurehead of a movement that was frankly so much an online virus, a symbolism, the fact that the man who first came up with its sort of twisted creed may no longer be on the face of the earth alive is a massively important moment for the hunt. it shows i think when it comes to the united states trying to prosecute what it considers justice to seek down the people who cause horrors like that that they have now twice been ultimately successful. osama bin laden behind the 9/11 attacks dead. killed after painstaking years of work and a daring special forces raid. and now yet again it seems the cia have assisted in locating this man and u.s. special forces are believed to have killed him at this point. not definitive, as you heard my colleague ryan browne say, but still the increasing conclusion here is that he is dead and if

that is the case that's a body blow for the radical notion of jihad against the west globally but specifically against isis. >> absolutely. and also a huge foreign policy win for president donald trump who basically was giving us a little snapshot of what may be to come tweeting just a few hours ago "something very big has just happened." nic, i know you'll stand by for me. again, repeating, abu bakr al baghdadi the leader of isis, now we have two u.s. sources telling us they do believe that he may have been killed in a special u.s. operations force in northwest syria. stay with us. we'll be right back with more on the breaking news. t-mobile's newest signal reaches farther than ever before...

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in syria and iraq but around the world. we will bring you so much more on this breaking news story to cnn. stay with us. the u.s. raid targeting the leader of isis. we'll bring it all to you in a few moments. ah, mr. resourceful, brown-bagging it. so why you paying so much for wireless? i don't know... the new tracfone wireless gives you all kinds of control. leftovers? tracfone lets you keep your leftover data each month. what are you doing? unlimited carryover data! hey! do you know you can get unlimited talk and text on america's best 4g lte

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and if you are just joining us, we have breaking news that isis leader abu bakr al baghdadi is believed to have been killed in a u.s. raid in northwest syria. now, a u.s. defense official tells cnn that al baghdadi apparently detonated a suicide vest just as u.s. special forces

closed in. final confirmation is pending of course. that all-important dna analysis and of course other positive identifiers. al baghdadi has been in hiding for five years. we remind you. and we're being told that locating him of course this time as well was based on cia intelligence. president trump is expected to make a major announcement on sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. eastern. i will repeat, he did tweet, the president, a few hours ago saying something very big has just happened. want to remind you now, though, about about al baghdadi, the leader of that terrorist group isis. it is believed he was born in samarra, iraq in 1971. he was a sunni muslim from a very religious family. a biography posted on jihadist website says he earned a doctorate in islamic studies from a university in baghdad. it's believed he joined the iraqi insurgency after the u.s.-led invasion in 2003. he was later captured and spent

four years in a u.s.-run prison camp in southern iraq until his release in 2009. within a year he became a leader of al qaeda in iraq but eventually broke away to form the islamic state of iraq and syria. the u.s. is now offering a $25 million reward for al baghdadi's capture. what we do know, of course, was that this raid was based on cia intelligence in an area where normally the united states would not even have boots on the ground. and that is highly significant. cedric layton is a former deputy director of the nsa and is a cnn military analyst. he joins us now live from washington. and i want to talk to you about that. we've gotten in northwest syria here, an area where it's conceivable that without tipping off the russians or turkish forces or the syrian force that's they would have had to get air clearance, right? or do you believe this was more

about the way the osama bin laden raid went in pakistan where you really try and tell no one? >> well, you know, paula, it could be both. there is, you know, perhaps one of the parties involved like turkey may have known something about this or the russians may have known something about it. because it is in the interests actually of both countries that baghdadi be eliminated from the scene. so it is conceivable that they did it that way. but what i think is more likely until we get more information, my hunch is that this was done without telling either country. but we'll see if that turns out to be correct. either way, with flight clearances it becomes a huge issue. you have to make sure that every single piece of airspace that you're going to be transversing actually is available to you and that there's no conflict with another side. and that's pretty tough to do in an environment like syria, especially that part of syria

which is right near the turkish border. >> especially when you have of course the russian air force right now dictating a lot of what happens in that airspace and known the tension there. it's not unheard of that the united states and russia wouldn't cooperate on something like, that but of course extremely complicated. you know, dramatic details here that we're getting from our brian browne at the pentagon saying that he had a suicide vest. i suppose you'd have to assume that he would know that the americans were looking for him wherever he may be and would have had this kind of a plan. but really dramatic details there. >> well, absolutely, paula. and on the suicide vest there were intelligence reports that came out in the public domain a few years ago that al baghdadi actually slept with a suicide vest on his person. so this is not a surprise based on those reports that this actually was how he lived, in essence carrying a suicide vest with him at all times.

and this story is true, if this part of the reporting is -- it turns out to be correct, then this seems to be a true to form kind of situation where baghdadi, you know, the reports of him were accurate and he used this suicide vest in that last instance to avoid capture. >> and we want to be clear here, right? that u.s. authorities are telling us they believe that he has been killed but cannot know for sure until they get of course that dna confirmation. cedric, it's -- you know what we're going back to, right? it's that raid on osama bin laden and the collective relief around the globe that osama bin laden had been killed. for donald trump this would be quite a foreign policy moment, an epic one quite frankly, if this turns out to be true. >> oh, yes. absolutely. and just like at the time president obama, at the time of the osama bin laden raid, president obama did reap a lot of benefits from that in a political sense, and i think it

probably helped assure his re-election, the other thing that donald trump has to look forward to is certainly a bounce in that sense in terms of his foreign policy credentials or chops in this case. of course the people that really did the work are the intelligence agencies and the military raiders that actually performed this mission. so that's -- it was good on him if this turns out to be correct that he directed this raid and that it was successful. it certainly beats any type of unsuccessful situation which we've had in the past such as the raid to try to free the iran hostages way back in 1980. and those are the kinds of things that can make or break a u.s. president, quite frankly. and in donald trump's case it probably couldn't have come at a better time. >> i was going to say, you even had people like senator lindsey graham saying that basically trump's policy in syria was now a shambles given the fact that

those u.s. troops on donald trump's order had moved out of syria and allowed the turkish forces and now russia to move in there. and yet this will allow him what, cedric, do you believe to -- as if they knew what they were doing all along in syria and this would be a victory that he can take to the ballot box. >> sure. in many cases certainly the people that are in president trump's corner are going to say, you know, he knew that this raid was going to take place. he had confidence that it would succeed and therefore this is part of a master plan in order to do these kinds of things. my view on this is that it probably wasn't as neat and easy as that, although clearly the president had information on the ra raid, listened to the different -- people from the special operations community who would brief him on this, and he also looked at this and said, you know, he gave it that green

light to go ahead. and he probably thought if the raid was successful i can open up this area to turkey and it won't matter anymore. so that may have been part of his thinking. now, whether it matters or not, i think that's a subject for debate. but that's one of those nuances of military and national security policy that may very well get lost in the heat of battle in terms of the election campaign. >> but it is an important nuance. and the point that he will have been privy to briefings about what was going on there on the ground in northwest syria and of course will be able to explain that at a later date if he chooses to. as i said, he did a tweet saying something very big has just happened and that we will hear from him early in the morning. cedric leighton, thanks so much. we appreciate your time this evening especially in giving us that context. i know want to go back to cnn's nic paton-walsh. he joins us live from northern iraq. and nic, we were just talking about the fact that of course northwest syria not a place you would expect necessarily it is that easy for the united states to operate. but i'd like you to weigh in here in terms of the posture of

both the turkish government and of course the russian military about if they had known about something like this, if they would give it their blessing, so to speak, knowing that if special forces were going up there and they needed to clear the airspace there that they would have thought, okay, this is in everyone's interest, we will put disagreements aside and we'll have coordinated with them? >> listen, i'm sure we will hear in the hours ahead that there was coordination to some degree or maybe not. i do recall after the raid against bin laden there was speculation the pakistanis were tipped off but they weren't. something like this in my speculative opinion is a high sensitive piece of information. you would not give it to anybody because frankly your competitors in the region don't want to give you the win. they might, you might argue, prefer to see baghdadi still alive and the united states at this point when frankly they'd been at a -- in terms of foreign policy goals in the region in the past two weeks and this is an extraordinary win for the

united states military. so my personal hunch would be you would certainly not tell the russians, you would probably not tell your nato ally turkey because of how bad your relationship with turkey is at that point. and also too that u.s. special forces are practiced at going into extraordinary hostile environments as low as they can and then making that kind of move. so i think it's possible this occurred without u.s. -- >> and you're absolutely right, nick. we know they can operate unilaterally when they want to pretty much in any sphere they want to. the point is in terms of any backlash there would be when people find out exactly where they were and what they were doing, it is, though, as you said a kind of unorthodox place for them to be operating given what's happened recently. >> it's not unorthodox, absolutely. it's extraordinary how dangerous this place is. this is a place where we haven't really seen u.s. boots on the ground ever. there's a possibility they may have secretively put people in in raids in sort of 2015 or so. but this is a place that's the reserve of drone strikes only.

so the mere fact if this in fact was a ground raid, and it sounds like given the level of detail you're hearing out of my colleagues in washington that they did have boots on the ground to be able to know this much, that this is one of the most daring things they've done probably comparable to that raid into pakistan that killed bin laden. this is the sort of snake pitt of al qaeda, the absolute lair. it's a complex territory because there are lots of civilians there but lots of the islamist fighters there have al qaeda links. strongly jihadist in their perception, quite radicalized. and this has been the place where frankly many intelligence officials have been reticent to talk about it because they see this threat as so substantial and they don't quite know what to do about it. idlib is an extraordinary riddle. you can't really launch a military operation without killing possibly thousands of innocent civilians but you also know that within their midst are al qaeda affiliates. and it seems possibly, possibly because we say northwestern syria, and i speculate idlib because that is the most likely place where you'd find

sympathetic places to hide if you were someone like abu bakr al baghdadi, but remember, bin laden hid in abbottabad and that was right under the noses of the pakistani equivalent of west point, the officers training college. so remember that he could have been anywhere frankly in northwestern syria hiding out in a farmhouse without a phone sign signal, but it would appear more likely that he would choose that kind of place to feel more secure. and that brings us to the question of the nature of this raid and i think frankly given the sensitivity of the target, the sensitivity of the area, highly unlikely the americans would broadcast their intentions even to a nato ally like turkey. you've got to bear in mind, paula, we've seen for u.s. officials, for u.s. soldiers who'd been working in the fight against isis over the past years, and they'd been hiding out in kind of shacks and ditches frankly for a long period of time in this dirty messy fight alongside the syrian kurds to kick back the most dangerous militant group we've seen in decades. they've had a very tough few weeks. they've seen their positions on the orders of their commander in chief collapse inside of syria.

they've had to withdraw at a hasty rate because their commander in chief has broadcast their intentions before they'd managed to execute it. they'd seen themselves reconstitute their mission in a significantly worse tactical place than they could possibly imagine. but while all that has been going on while that enormous change in geopolitics and their position here has been going on, it seems with the other hand they've also been killing possibly the world's most wanted man. now, that was an extraordinary i think symbolic statement by the u.s. military here in terms of what they've been capable of doing while this other stuff has been going down. and of course to a kind of irony that the man who has made their job so much harder here, president donald trump, is also the one who will be announcing in the hours ahead this substantial symbolic victory for the united states here. it's not the end of the fight against isis. in fact, he'd claimed he'd done that a while back. donald trump, that is. but it is certainly a massive blow for them as an ideology, paula. >> yeah, absolutely. and it's important context you're giving us there, and i appreciate that insight.

i also want to talk to you about these reports we're getting he would have been wearing a suicide vest. i mean, as far as you know, nick, he would have been knowing obviously that at any point in time u.s. special forces might be coming for him and would have taken his own precautions, whatever he thought he could do in terms of either escaping or killing herself with a suicide vest. obviously, those kinds of scenarios play out all the time. not just for isis and those protecting him but obviously for u.s. special operations forces as well. >> yeah, personally i think it would be highly unlikely if 24/7 baghdadi was walking around wearing a suicide vest. it's just too damn dangerous, frankly. you wouldn't be able to go about your daily life. imagine trying to cook dinner in that kind of apparel. but i'm sure there would be explosive devices near him, ways he could have found to end his own life if he he preferred that over capture. bear in mind, too, obviously his you might say humiliating parade for him in front of cameras as a

prisoner, possibly if that were to occur or eventual trial would have been a massive complication for the united states juridically but also for him in terms of being humiliated in that way. we saw bin laden was shot dead by special forces when they broke into the top floor of that villa, but it may be if you're hearing directly here these reports turn out to be correct that baghdadi chose to remove that whole part of the equation. i mean, obviously in a raid of this nature you have substantial warning as the special forces begin to move in that they're likely coming for you. and perhaps it may have been his desire to show a final message, possibly more honorable in the twisted creed of isis to take your own life in the face of the enemy than necessarily find yourself captured. we've seen ourselves, our cameraman when we were watching the onslaught against mosul, when he filmed an isis fighter coming out of a ditch opening fire on the kurdish peshmerga in front of the him, finding himself close to capture and then blowing himself up on kr m camera. you have to understand the kind of ideology that compels individuals like this to take

their own lives at a moment like that. and i'm sure baghdadi's final statement, if you were, if thin deed was what occurred, will have been done entirely purposely to send a continuing message -- >> absolutely. you only have to be reminded of just the chilling savagery that we saw again and again and again in photos and in video over those years to understand exactly what they were all about. nick paton-walsh in northern iraq. i know you will stand by for us. in the meantime we continue to cover this breaking story here on cnn, that u.s. raid targeting the leader of isis. stay with us. our 18-year-old

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okay. welcome back. we want to bring you up to speed on the momentous developments in the hunt for isis leader ail al baghdadi. he believes to have been killed in a raid in northwest syria. it appears that al baghdadi

detonated a suicide vest. president trump is expected to make actual an announcement regarding foreign policy in the next few hours. al baghdadi has been in hiding since 2014, when he stood, you're looking at him right there, at the great mosque in mos mosul, iraq, and announced a caliphate. it's important you bring us the context from the border and what's gone on in the last couple weeks, in terms of u.s. foreign policy and how so much has changed on the ground? >> a radical couple of weeks, with the turkish incursions, the militia groups and other jihadi elements to what the turks want to do is to establish what they

call a safe zone, going some 32 kilometers inside the syrian territory to ye yatcreate a buf zone. how does this relate to the reported killing of ail bl bagh. it's in that safe zone we believe that baghdadi was attacked from u.s. speshlt forces. inside the territory that's supposedly now part of a safe zone. the withdrawal of the troops would undermine the ability to they would have troops that they would have to withdraw. it has ganone ahead and supportg himself.

he may have ignited himself with a suicide vest, in typical isis fashion. the wider strategic issues remain, with continuing fighting going on between the turkish-backed militias and the syrian democratic forces who work so hard with u.s. allies to get rid of the so-called islamic state, from this entire region. >> you make a good point. we know the capability of the u.s. special forces and to function, even from the troops there, on the ground. it was a month ago, in september, that he was targeting that area. he had the prisoners, the isis prisoners and their families. it seemed like al baghdadi to

encourage people to storm those prisons. at that time, it was highly significant, wasn't it? >> it was highly significant. but the prisons are still in the hands of the syrian democratic forces. their troops have been guarding them. but a lot of them have been pulled off that task to gourd into the territory. there's been smaller prisons in which they were accused of letting some turkish prisoners out. that statement coming from baghdadi a couple months ago, they desperately needed to get people out of the prisons. not just in syria. but there's a large number of isis in iraq. he also wanted forces to carry out a unilateral attacks,

particularly what we've seen in europe, where people have been self-generated. the london bridge attacks were follows of the so-called islamic state. there's 6,000 to 8,000 men, most of whom are potentially being held by the democratic forces. it's the future of those sorts of matter that are problematic. europeans are uncomfortable whether they should be repatriated or whatever they want to do. so, a highly volatile, still potential source of terrorist activities. still exists. if al baghdadi is coming, it's a

symbolic blow and intellectual life blood. to consideration that this organization had a tradition. it did. not just in the islamic tradition. the people around him took a meticulous approach to the management of savagery. they have an unwritten napkin. it outlines the efficacy, the precision use of ultraviolence. >> and an arm that was chilling and savage in the things they

portrayed. our sam kiley there on the syria/turkish border. we'll continue here at cnn, to follow breaking news. a reminder that sources are telling cnn, that al baghdadi, the leader of isis, is believe to have been killed in a u.s. military raid in northwest syria. they're awaiting dna confirmation. stay with cnn, as we continue to bring you that breaking news. we're honored to have you on campus for the official visit. aflac!

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this is cnn breaking news. >> i want to welcome our viewers. i'm paula newton at cnn center in atlanta. we have breaking news that al baghdadi is believed to have been killed in a raid in northwest syria. as u.s. special forces were closing in on him. final confirmation is pending dna analysis. he has been in hiding for five e