this is cnn, breaking news. and welcome to our viewers here in the united states and all around the world, we're live coming from atlanta, georgia. i'm natalie allen. of course we ten to follcontinu follow the breaking news that isis leader abu bakr al baghdadi is believed to have been killed in a u.s.-led military raid in northwest syria.

what you're seeing is nighttime video taken by syrian activists as a military operation got under way in northern idlib province near the turkish border. cnn cannot confirm that this was the actual raid targeting al baghdadi. a u.s. defense official tells cnn that al baghdadi apparently detonated a suicide vest as u.s. special forces closed in. dna analysis will confirm whether it is in farkt al baghdadi. the islamic cleric has been in hiding for five years and locating him was based on cia intelligent. president trump is expected to make a major announcement early sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. earlier the president tweeted

this "something very big has just happened". nick paton walsh and ben wedeman will be helping to put this in perspective. let's go to nick. first, talk about the significance of finally catching up and reportedly killing the leader of isis. >> reporter: i'm actually inn in erbil, but this is an end of a chapter. it is not the end of a campaign, but it does occur, probably the most difficult part of the campaign, one in which their commander in chief have got their forces to move back from certain areas, but it is doubtless the death of the author of an ideology which caused hundreds if not thousands of people to lose their lives.

inch sen innocents here which bother tre brunt of the isis campaign from the philippines to russia, through to afghanistan, africa, isis ideology spread fast, like a virus. but now the author of that, a man who was so often in the shadows. so rhett sent to be publicly seen from the likelihood of what happened that just did. it is incredible for the apparatus to have found this man during the onslaught and take him out quite decisively. the video purports to come from idlib province which opens up a whole set of different questions, about how the leader came to be sheltering in the heartland of isis's ideology rival, al qaeda, a major nato ally about whom there are questions about the proximity to

isis groups. there have been accusations that forces released to fight syrian occu kurds are extremists. the death of this one man and the enormous damage it does for this sickening brand he exported globally. his face in public only once. and even then in the presence of a small number. this is the moment at friday prayers in a freshly-conquered mosul, al baghdadi, one of the most successful group in history chose to reveal himself. he spent a decade rising quietly. a ph.d. student said to like football, these records show his capture in 2004 near fallujah, and held for years as a civilian

internee at u.s. camp bukkha. it was there that he turned. >> translator: al baghdadi was not cruel or radical at the time. he just wanted to fight the americans. however, he leaned toward violence in bukkha. >> as he was leaving, and he knew my unit was from long island, new york. here we are a few year hence, and i look at those words in a little bit different context right now. >> reporter: then there is silence, a long stretch in the shadows of iraq's savage civil war before hitting the al qaeda sanctions list in june 2011. here, he led the islamic state of iraq, the al qaeda franchise in iraq whose previous leader,

sau kau we, the u.s. killed. became a magnet for the bloodthirsty. baghdadi silently behind an isis brutality to extreme even al qaeda disowned it, leading to the extremist groups to split in february 2014. and months later, the group to show its fighters breaking the borders of syria and iraq, declaring their caliphate. with baghdadi at its helm, claiming direct lineage from the prophet mohammad, the new caliph, the pinnacle of years in calculation, isis rose fast. then came an attack on an occupation of mosul. the atrocity against the yazidis in mt. sinjar.

horrors marked by an obscene worship of violence. and all these, baghdadi is invisible but yet doubtless a key decision-maker. one of the more terrifying things he helped create is the obsession with gruesomely videoing murder and harnessing social media to make it a global franchise against people it had often never met. from afghanistan, paris, brussels, atrocities committed by people who were attracted to isis' brand to commit atrocities and even tie for for it. but a recording of his speech. it became a pattern. no public appearances, mixed with randomly-released audio statements. u.s. officials told cnn they believe he was injured in may 2017 and had to take five months away from his leadership duties

as a result. yet from that moment onwards, what was left of isis' so-called caliphate collapsed in on itself. mosul freed from their grip in july, raqqah, back october. isis reduced to a tiny slip of land on the iraqi and syrian border. and an idea, infectious, hateful, still capable of inspiring barbaric insanity, yet now without its figure head, a man willing to lead his followers to death but only from the shadows. now natalie, we are hearing actually from an eyewitness, i should say a witness to some of the loud explosions that were in idlib province in northwestern syria just after midnight or so. this witness lives inside a village about five kilometers away from the town. balisha is a town you'll hear a lot of. it is pointed to be the location of the raid. the witness says after midnight

he heard multiple helicopters and war planes flying in the sky. he saw, he says, four helicopters but there could have been more. importantly, he heard heavy machine guns which would suggest some kind of ground force moving in on whatever it is that he subsequently witnessed. and then there were large blasts for an hour, and it was hard to tell precisely whether it was barischa that was attacked. a lot of that adds some degree of authenticity to the video. obviously, we cannot authenticate it entirely. it may be possible to see parts of barischa from the turkish border. it doesn't necessarily suggest turkey was anymore or less likely to have any knowledge of baghdadi's whereabouts, but still, the geography here is key. it will complicate the

explanation as to how the world's most wanted man came to be hiding in that area. and we'll have to wait and see from the announcement from president trump to see how and who knew he was there. >> that announcement coming from the president in six hours now. thank you, nick in erbil for us. now we want to go to ben wedeman. he was hiding out, lived in the shadows. that's how osama bin laden ended up hiding as well, but he wasn't regarded like osama bin laden. >> reporter: no, in fact, natalie, when we spent two months in eastern syria for that final battle against the so-called fiscphysical caliphate spoke with dozens of isis fighters who had been captured. we spoke with isis women, the wives of those fighters, their children, and very few actually even mentioned the name of abu

bakr al baghdadi. their affiliation, their loyalty was to what they said "the islamic state." abu bakr al baghdadi appeared just once in public in 2014 in that mosque in mosul, and after that he was largely absent. he was not for instance like osama bin laden whose fame goes back to the 1980s when he led the so-called area knmujahideen. abu bakr al baghdadi was largely unknown in iraq itself, his native land. when he appeared in that mosque in 2014, in mosul, many people had no idea who he was. and so there's sort of a large difference here in the sense that in the western media, particularly the american media,

we tend to focus on leaders. but, if you go back and look at the last 20 years or so, saddam hussein was captured and executed, but that did not bring the insurgency in iraq to an end. osama bin laden was killed in 2011 but al qaeda is still very much in existence. muammar gaddafi was killed in 2011, but it's not as if libya has returned to peace and harmony. so therefore there's no reason to believe that abu bakr al baghdadi's death is going to lead to the end of isis. keep in mind that isis is present still in iraq, in syria, in the sinai peninsula of egypt. in libya. in west africa. in afghanistan, in the philippines. it has carried out attacks in western europe. it is an organic entity that

will continue to exist and perhaps thrive in the absence of abu bakr al baghdadi because he was in a sense just the figure head of an organism that is self sustaining. they obviously lost their fis l physical caliphate. but as an idea it exists. it is not just about to disappear because abu bakr al baghdadi has been killed bit americans. >> there's probably no doubt that places around the world are on alert because of what happened there in syria. thank you for your perspectives. let's go to our sam kylie. he is on the border, the turkish-syrian border. interesting that nick was pointing out this reasonabgion, very close it is to turkey. >> reporter: yeah, not only close to turkey but very heavily

dominated by al qaeda groups. elements of what was known as the al nusra front remain there in some force. they really are the dominant force there, natalie. it's also incredibly densely populated with hundreds of thousands of internal refugees who fled aleppo and other areas as a result of the russian and assad regime's bombardment, which in idlib has been continuing on an almost daily basis. so a highly complex battlefield environment. so then insert an american force. highly complex also in terms of the intelligence. now, it's conceivable, really, that the intelligence that led to al baghdadi must have come from people on the ground as much from signals intelligence, because he was actually in an area surrounded by unfriendly forces. al qaeda and the so-called islamic state split from each

other and very hard against one another during the beginning of the so-calledic caliphate. the death is largely symbolic but the symbol of the management issues that underpenned particularly the management of savagery. that is their term for how to very specifically use those ghastly videos to distribute a terrorizing message that allowed them to magnetically attract jihadis from around the world because they actual little had a c caliphate. but that is what al baghdadi did. he did it, in being boxed into this area, away from where isis had any serious support on the

ground, away from the putative capital in raqqah, but in fact, inside the area controlled by al qaeda, just maybe four or five miles south of the turkish border. begs the question, was he trying to make a run for it? was he trying to get his own family out of the country, perhaps that is the way he was exposed. no doubt we will over the coming days get much more detail on how this raid was conducted. but i think the other thing to bear in mind is this highly complex raid that in all probability did involve u.s. ground troops. at the very least to connect dna material for testing so that they can identify who exactly they did kill in this raid. so, in all probability it was launched, the closest launch pad for them would have been an air base here in turkey, a very big american air base, which would have provided at least the short flight time onto the target and then of course the extraction. but extremely daring raid that

was almost inevitably will be spun by the remaining elements within the so-called islamic state into a moment of martyrdom for their so called caliph rather than being seen as a significant blow to them. as you are suggesting around the world, there will be security forces on a heightened state of alert for some time. in order to protect other mak nations and indeed iraq and syria against revenge attacks. this is an organization much like al qaeda that now exists as an ideological hydro-headed creature rather than as it was in the past before it was physically destroyed as an area, as an entity that claimed and did control substantial swaths of the middle east and iraq. >> sam kylie there for us on the border. we'll be hearing more about this operation. as you say, extremely daring

that was carried out by special ops in the coming hours. be sure to stay with cnn. a u.s. military raid, believed to have killed the leader of isis. we'll be right back. alice loves the smell of gain so much, she wished it came in a fabric softener too. [throat clears] say hello to your fairy godmother, alice. oh and look they got gain scent beads and dryer sheets too!

if you are just joining us here at cnn, there has been a major development in the hunt for abu bakr al baghdadi. the head of the terror group is believed to have died in a u.s.

raid in northwest syria. a sort says al baghdadi apparently detonated a suicide voice as the operation was carried out and forces were closing in. a video abeers ppears to show a operation. cnn at this moment cannot confirm the authenticity of this footage. i want to bring in roger shanahan from sydney, australia, a research fellow. and i know that you have worked with the u.n. in lebanon and syria in the past. so you are familiar with this region. first question to you, your reaction to the news of the possible death of the leader of isis and what it could mean. >> there's two aspects. it's a coup for the coalition

who'd been hunting him for so long. but as previous people have said, we have to put it into perspective. organizations like islamic state understand that the leadership will be killed at some stage, so there are always succession plans in place. and the second element that's quite interesting is where he was killed. most people believe that he was in iraq, an area he knew much better and where he had perhaps the support of some tribal affiliations. but he was killed only a few kilometers from the turkish border which raises a whole new set of questions itself. >> what are those questions? because this is an area where rebels had operated, where al qaeda is, an area where the syrian government and russia are not. and it's almost vaguely similar to when osama bin laden was finally found in an unlikely place, a town in pakistan.

>> yeah, absolutely. i miean this raises on the firs blush some uncomfortable questions for turkey about how the leader of the islamic state could be so close to the turkish border without turkey taking some action against him. also, why he would feel comfortable enough to be so close to the turkish border, and also the temporal proximity to the turkish intersession into northern syria and the subsequent u.s. withdrawal, was there some kind of deal or some kind of mea culpa from ankara from which they shot al baghdadi's location to washington, and this also reaffirms the kind of claims or allows damascus and moscow to reenforce their claims that their action to try to retake idlib is because it is a haven to terrorists, and here we are

in that same province in idlib finding the leader of the islamic state. so there are going to be some medium-term repercussions. >> i'm glad you brought up the timing of this, a time when president trump has announced he's pulling troops out of syria, and that caused turkey toto encroach syria to push back the kurds. i heard an analyst say earlier it might have been for that reason, if troops were coming out of syria, this was a time to move in on al baghdadi. >> yeah, i mean, it's one of the fascinating aspects about this operation. we'll probably never know the information, because those kind of intelligence exchanges are and will remain classified for years to come. but as one of your previous reporters said, you know, one of the aspects of these kind of operations is you want to make

the transit times as short as possible. so it will be interesting to find out where this operation was launched from, and it was, if it was operated or based out of southern turkey, then that would indicate that the turkish government was at the least consulted about this, if not party to it previously. so the connection between this and the actions of the turkish government and u.s. withdrawal, i think over the next few days, plenty of people are going to be trying to make a link between the two. >> all right, we appreciate your perspective, thanks so much for coming on. roger shanahan for us from australia. thank you. >> my pleasure. >> stay with cnn as we continue to cover this breaking news. a u.s.-military raid is believed to have killed the leader of isis. devices are like doorways

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welcome back to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i'm natalie allen. if you are just joining us, we've been following breaking news over the past few hours that isis lead, abu bakr al baghdadi is believe issed to have been killed in idlib.

this nighttime video was taken by syrian activists of a military operation as it got underway near the turkish border. cnn can dmnot confirm that this the actual raid targeting al baghdadi. but he apparently detonated a suicide vest as u.s. forces closed in. dna analysis will confirm whether it is in fact al baghdadi. we've been told locating him was based on cia intelligence. president trump is expected to make a major announcement sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. eastern. earlier, he tweeted "something very big has just happened ". . let let's talk more about it. i am joined by a security

expert. we know very little except that it happened in idlib province. that's raising a lot of questions about that region would be a hiding place for al baghdadi, very close to turkey. what do you make of that aspect? >> not much yet. we know in the last week and a half because of the battlefield situation, there's a lot of fluidity and movement of forces, and that includes hidden forces. in this case, the remnants. i.s., support elements of i.s. people who might be helping i.s. people move from one area to another. so the fact that he was caught there, we don't yet know from the americans what, what the reason was gore his movement there and if he'd been there for a while or not, so i don't think we can read too much into the fact that he was caught there just yet. >> by all accounts, this was a

daring raid by special ops because of the complexities of idlib province and all the different factions there and civilians as well. what does that say to you? >> it says to me, well, one, this looks like an outstanding piece of work, again, on the quality of the level that we saw in the osama bin laden raid. the fact that we could maintain secrecy in that difficult environment. the fact that they were able to reach the target and actually be successful speaks highly of what was used here. i think the advantage that u.s. forces had, probably here, compared to say the bin laden raid is that they were likely positioned closer by. weigh h we had u.s. assets on the sgroupd and in the air in battle zone, battle space around idlib that we're much more familiar with and have more intelligence on. in some ways, you're right, a

lot of moving parts, a lot of people to be wary of, difficult operating element. and an area that special forces knows in particular. >> we know isis is underground now in syria, but there are pockets of isis around the world yet. what we are reporting is the probable leader of the leader of isis. how significant is this? >> i'd say quite, and natalie, you put your finger on it. it's one of the big questions here other than did we gather much intelligence to exploit is what's the big impact going to be. what's the impact going to be on the movement. he of course was an interesting leader. he was a leader for the i.s. and leader of the islamic state. he combined those elements and that makes him a rare figure or special in that regard.

another question for a lot of security analysts is what will be the reaction from i.s. will they be able to mount a real response or is that only in the areas where they're strong at the moment or they have remnants left. think of parts of turkey where they have infrastructure, iraq. and are they going to be looking for u.s. targets there to strike back, or will they indeed be capable of pulling off something in the next few days, next few weeks in response to this further afield. and of course we know they've acted in africa to i hasri lank. there la be a lot of intelligence services looking very closely at are we going to see a powerful reaction in the next few weeks. >> right, because there are cells, as you say, around the world. the question is, how this will affect isis, the operation. do you expect that there will be a leader that steps right in

where al baghdadi exited? >> i think it may take a while. i mean, clearly the movement has put him front and center as the top leader since 2013-2014. he has really carried the flag and been the symbol for that movement when we look at a personification. there are a number of other leaders of course who have come to the fore in the second tier. but as a movement it's really been one leadership, one person who has been featured. much as we saw, you know, many dictators in the past being featured by singular movements. so i think it's going to take a little while for somebody here to take hayis place. i think they're going to have a hard time now because of the broken propaganda apparatus to move the new leader forward and make the same kind of lofty

position as al baghdadi. >> i hope so. as we reflect back on the actions of the group. thank you so much for your perspective, glenn shone for us. >> we'll talk more about this raid believed to have killed the leader of isis. ef for your worst cold and flu symptoms, on sunday night and every night. nyquil severe. the nightime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, best sleep with a cold, medicine. mornings were made for better things than rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis. when considering another treatment, ask about xeljanz xr, a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis or active psoriatic arthritis for whom methotrexate did not work well enough. it can reduce pain, swelling,

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you're looking at video taken earlier, reportedly by syrian activists as a major military operation got under way near the turkish border carried out by u.s. special ops. cnn cannot confirm this is the raid targeting abu bakr al baghdadi, but we are told the leader is dead. the u.s. and other countries have been hunting al baghdadi for five years, ever since he declared the caliphate in 2014. cia intelligence eventually led to a location in northwest syria. al baghdadi apparently killed himself with a suicide vest as u.s. commandos closed in.

our nick paton walsh joins us from erbil. you've been following the story since it developed and covering this region for so long. we've been talking about what's next and let's back up and talk about the significance of reportedly catching up with this man. >> reporter: a number of officials now are saying that abu bakr al baghdadi is dead. if that is the case, there are two major things to be concerned about. firstly, how is it that he came to be hiding what seems to be so close to the turkish border under it seems to be an area controlled by al qaeda, kind of the ideological rival of isis. that's one issue that people will be trying to address. the second is what does that mean now for the operatives that are still under the isis banner. do they respond to this death to some degree?

are they waiting nfor this to happen to launch various attacks? a lot of the attacks appear to be opportunistic and claimed by isis afterwards. and then finally, two, exactly what this means for the u.s. operation inside syria, too. they have been very difficult two to three weeks in which their commander in chief has told them to withdraw from certain areas, enabling turkey and russia into the vacuum. still, while that chaos was unfolding, this remarkable feat of taking out the world's most-wanted man. we don't know how it came about, we don't know if the operation was launched with the nato ally, with whom their relationship is very precarious at the moment, turkey, or if the u.s. flew from further away for example where i'm standing iraqi kurdistan here. but the net result is the same. and the death of abu bakr al

baghdadi marks the end of a chapter, certainly, in isis' history. he was the man who authored the ideology. it was born from the insurgency in iraq against the u.s. invasion presence there and sort of morphed or metastasized. taking on, exploiting the grievances of sunnis in syria after the lengthy bombardments of the assad regime in the north of the country, allowing that to f foement the loathing. the nhatred. to create a bridge. but certainly, today, a question about the documentation of this, the location of where this occurred, the official confirmation from the united states that it is abu bakr al baghdadi before we move on to what the implications are for

the region. natalie? >> all right, we'll be waiting to hear about it in a few hours from president trump. let's turn now to our ben wedeman. he is live for us in beirut. let's talk more about al baghdadi and who he was as far as the leader of isis. was he highly regarded? what did people think of him? >> reporter: well, he was significant in the sense that he was a descendant of the prophet mohammad. he was a man who oversaw the birth of the so-called islamic state. and he stood at the very pinnacle of the pyramid of power within the area controlled by isis at its peak, of course, was the size of great britain, but what was significant about al baghdadi is he only had one personal public appearance, and that was in july of 2014, in the

grand mosque of mosul in iraq. he did not really develop a cult of personality. and natalie, when i spent two months in eastern syria, covering the fall of the so-called physical caliphate, we spoke with dozens of captured fighters, their wives, their children, ando only a handful mentioned the name of abu bakr al baghdadi. the vast majority stressed their allegiance to the islamic state. and it's not as if he made, he made that one public appearance. he made very few public statements until actually the collapse of the islamic state, the elimination of it. and therefore, he wasn't the same sort of personality or public personality in the sense that osama bin laden was.

who became famous in the 1980s when he led the so-called arab mujahideen and was in the headlines from then until his death in pakistan in 2011. so, abu bakr al baghdadi's death is significant, but, as i've said before, isis still operates according to the inspector general of the pentagon in, by the thousands, thousands of fighters in syria, in iraq. they're also present in the sinai peninsula of egypt, in libya, in west africa, in afghanistan, in the philippines. they will not be disappearing just because the leader of the islamic state is now dead. natalie? >> right, hopefully this will be an initial blow to those still working under isis and the flag.

thank you so much, ben wedeman for us in beirut. let's go now to cnn's sam kyle eye. he is on the turkish-syrian border, near where this operation was carried out. and many questioning now how al baghdadi came to be hiding so close to the turkish border there in idlib province, sam. >> reporter: yeah, remarkable place to have found him, again, echoes of the bin laden raid, which was deep inside pakistan, next to their office's academy. in this case, the world's most wanted man who's reportedly been killed according to u.s. officials hiding deep in al qaeda territory or al qaeda-dominated area. now the islamic state were bitter rivals of al qaeda, which indeed isis and al baghdadi split away from what was the al qaeda franchise, the nusra

group, back in 2014, in order to form isis and actually fought against them, killing many in and around raqqah. so not the obvious place to be hiding, but very close indeed to turkey. some five miles inside syria, close to the turkish border in northwestern idlib province. an area very densely populated now with refugees from government forces and russian forces bombardment, mainly, of towns and cities like aleppo and homs and elsewhere where people have been in the opposition sgru sgr groups. have been heavily concentrated in idlib down in itself, which that whole area has been almost constantly attacked by the regime and russia. a very complex battle space to get involved in. cnn has had some uncorroborated eyewitness reporting from an individual who doesn't want to be named near a village or town called sumada, saying that they

reckon there was fighting for at least an hour. that there was a, clearly a number of aircraft, helicopters in the air. we've also seen video from that, what's reported, we believe to be from that location, saying very, very pin point strikes, airstrikes. the sounds of heavy machine guns heard, and that dove tails with what u.s. officials are telling us that they will be conducting dna testing on bodies recovered from that location, which means at the very least they had troops on the ground to retrieve them. in this environment in which not withstanding the rivalry between the so-called islamic state and al qaeda, they are united in their hatred and detestation of the united states and all that that country stands for and all of her allies and would, no doubt, have relished the opportunity to engage in direct combat with american kmcommando

ground. >> all right, and we should be learning more from president trump in just a few hours. and we don't know all the details, of course, at this point. it's early on in the operation, whether there were any casualties and how involved it was. but we did have our former cia analyst. weel contin we'll continue and talk about it as we carry on here. you're watching cnn.

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if you're just joining us, we want to recap the news we've been following for the past few years that isis leader abu bakr al baghdadi is believed to have been killed in a u.s. raid in syria's northwest prove ince of idlib. by syrian activists.idual yvide-

cnn cannot confirm that this was the actual raid targeting abu bakr al baghdadi. a u.s. defense official tells cnn that al baghdadi apparently detonated a suicide vest as forces closed in. dna will confirm whether it is in fact al baghdadi. we're told the cia helped locate him. president trump is expected to make a statement early sunday morning. thank you for watching this hour, i'm natalie allen. i'll have more of our breaking news right after this. devices are like doorways

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>> announcer: that is cnn breaking news. welcome to our viewers joining us here in the united states and all around the world. i'm coming to you live from atlanta. i'm natalie allen. well, after five years in hiding, it is believed that al baghdadi has been killed in a u.s. military raid. this breaking news happened overnight in idlib province near the turkish border.