US special forces carried out a nighttime airborne raid on Thursday in northwestern Syria during which the head of the so-called Islamic State (IS) group blew himself and his family up, the White House said. The operation was the biggest blow to the jihadist organisation since his predecessor, the better-known Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, was killed in a similar raid in the same region of Idlib in 2019. “Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi – the leader of ISIS,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement, using anoth…