Trump says Baghdadi led his three children to death, detonating his suicide vest, which brought the tunnel they were in down around them.
He says that he will call the families of James Foley and Kayla Mueller today.
“He was an animal and he was a gutless animal,” says Trump. “Thank you very much. It’s a great day for our country”.
Last night was a great night for the United States and for the World. A brutal killer, one who has caused so much hardship and death, was violently eliminated—he will never again harm another innocent man, woman or child.
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Trump returns to paying tribute to the US dog that was injured in the operation. “The canine, a beautiful dog, a talented dog, was injured and brought back,” he says.
He says he and his team were gathered in the situation room at 5pm yesterday. The lift-off started moments later. He says that there were shots fired at the US helicopters as they were travelling towards the site and that the helicopters shot back.
They conducted an on-site DNA test and brought body parts back with them. He says that positive identification of Baghdadi was made about 15 minutes later.
Trump says the US had been following Baghdadi for some weeks.
He says that it was dangerous for the US to fly over other people’s territory, but they had cooperation from other countries. “We flew very, very low and very fast.”
“Russia treated us great… Iraq was excellent. We really had great cooperation,” he says. Trump says Turkey knew they were “going in”.
“We met with gun fire coming in, but that was local gun fire,” he says.
