Before dawn, last Thursday morning, American commandos set out on a secret mission in Syria.

Their goal to capture the leader of ISIS alive.

And that we figured would require some doing, including the fact that he would resist or fight back.

John Kirby is the Pentagon press secretary, and he told NPR about another complication

in the mission to capture Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Kharishi.

The ISIS leader was hiding out in a building with civilians.

There was an innocent family on the first floor of the building.

The family that we believe didn't even know that the leader of ISIS was on the third floor

of that house.

And we wanted to make sure we could get them out safely.

The US says those are some of the reasons it did not send a missile attack.

Instead, special forces went in on the ground.

The mission ended up taking two hours, more than twice the time it took for US forces

to attack Osama bin Laden's compound.

I mean, you can understand, particularly that family on the first floor, probably scared

frightened.

They didn't obviously know we were coming and coming in force.

Kirby says there was a call out over a bullhorn and Arabic trying to convince everyone in

the house to come out.

Shortly after that, Mr. Abdullah blew himself up and then of course they had to enter the

building.

Abdullah is a nickname for al-Kharishi.

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