Baghdadi is Dead as a Doornail: President Trump

Washington, Oct 28 (PTI) ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is "dead as a doornail", US President Donald Trump said Monday as he addressing a gathering of police chiefs in Chicago.

The ISIS chief blew up his suicide vest and died when he was chased inside a dead-end tunnel during a raid by the US Special Operations forces at his hideout in northwest Syria on Saturday.

Trump announced the success of the raid, saying Baghdadi, who is said to be 48 years old, died "whimpering and crying and screaming", and "like a dog and a coward", adding that the ISIS leader and "the losers" under his command "were very frightened puppies".

"It was a tremendous weekend. As you very well know and it was a tremendous weekend for our country. We killed ISIS leader al-Baghdadi," Trump said in his address to the International Association of The Chiefs of Police Annual Conference.

"They have been looking for him for a long time. They have been looking for him for many years. He was a sick and depraved man and now he is dead. And he didn't die bravely either," Trump said.

Trump said al-Baghdadi should have been taken out by previous presidents and that he was focused on getting the jihadist leader since he entered the White House.

"He should have been killed years ago. Another president should have gotten him, but to me it was a very important," he said.

He said military officials would tick off names of terrorists they had killed.

"I would say all of the time they would walk into my office sir, we killed this leader at a low level, this leader at - I said I never heard of him. I want al-Baghdadi, that's the only one I know now. I want al-Baghdadi, get him and they got him," he said amidst applause from the audience.

"But he was big time. He built the ISIS caliphate. You hear about ISIS that was him. It was once the physical size of the state of Ohio and had 7 million people and it was growing big, big, big. And they had a problem. It started about 2 and a half years ago," he said.

Trump said his administration has altogether destroyed the caliphate 100 per cent.

He said the terror state has been destroyed and the fighters are being held in prison.

"Remember, I got it down to 97 per cent and I said all right, let's go home. And then those people started saying 100 per cent. You know before me they didn't care but now they said what about 100 per cent and we met some great generals," he said.

"I learned a lot about generals. I met some good ones and I saw some bad ones, some that didn't have what it takes and others that had more than what anyone would have thought and it was supposed to take a year, it may be even two years and I said to them how long would it take. Think we can do it in one week, sir," he said.

"He was a little bit more like you but we have now tens of thousands of ISIS tight supervision and now we once the countries in the region to police their own borders. We don't want to be policeman in this case of two countries that haven't gotten along for centuries but we are keeping the oil. Remember that," said the US President.

Trump said the US will keep the oil.

"We want to keep the oil, USD 45 million a month, keep the oil. We have secured the oil," he said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)