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Hospitable terrain to isis. it hasn't been that for some years. so it is quite shocking to those of us who study isis and who have watched the movements of this organization over the last several years, that baghdadi would repair there. again, isis was expelled from west of the euphrates river in the period of 2014 to 2015 by various other organizations, including the free syrian army and the al qaeda affiliate, which is now going by several different names frankly. as i mentioned to you earlier, al qaeda and isis have broken apart in 2013, 2014. and they have never repaired that breach. so, y...

Unsurprising. that transit rutta cross the turkish border into the idlib province is a route that islamic extremists have been using for years now. a well-known smuggling route. >> richard, what do you believe is the state of isis right now if baghdadi is, in fact, dead? >> well, this is very -- it's a blow to the group, but the group was so much in flux. and actually toward the end, right in the end, baghdadi had lost some of his, some of his shine. he had lost some of his popularity because everyone has ups and downs in their career, even terrorists. and he -- his up was when he established ...

>> reporter: you pretty much just read all my reporting. we know that there was a raid that was overnight last night that targeted isis leader baghdadi. it occurred in the western, northwestern part of syria, which is, you know, one of the few areas where there seems to be some al qaeda or -- excuse me, there's some strong isis strong holds left in syria right now. we know that this is something that's just been developing in recent days. the u.s. received intelligence from u.s. intelligence sources. they spent some time developing them and the mission, the raid was launched last night local t...

Now. what can you tell us about the history of baghdadi and how he came to power? >> reporter: so, baghdadi has -- well, may have been, was the latest in a line of isis leaders. isis began as a faction of iraq, of al qaeda in iraq. so when u.s. forces went into iraq in 2003, the initial invasion which you remember quickly, the first six months to a year they were more or less welcomed in. but then the situation on the ground turned worse and worse, and the people realized that suddenly the u.s. invading force had changed the political dynamic and sunnis were now on their back foot, that sunni ...

Were only a few places locally that he had access to. he could have either crossed over into iraq. he's iraqi. baghdadi suggests the connection to iraq -- baghdadi means from baghdad. these are all known. he could have gone there where there are still some isis pockets. he could have gone down to the area right now everyone has been talking about, the so-called oil regions which still has a few isis sympathizers. or to the idlib area, and not surprising at all that he would have been by the turkish border on a pipeline because, just like bin lauden, you want to hide in a place where you don't ...