In his last moments, surrounded by elite US Delta Force operatives, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi crawled into a small hole in a tunnel in his Syria compound and blew himself up, the commander of American forces in the Middle East told reporters at the Pentagon today.

But the death of the IS leader will not extinguish the militant group’s ideology, US Central Command chief Gen. Frank McKenzie said, even as the Pentagon tries to keep up pressure to thin out its leadership with targeted cross-border raids into Syria.

“ISIS is first and last an ideology. We’re under no illusions that it will go away” with the death of Baghdadi, McKenzie said. As IS searches for a new leader, their actions will be “disjointed,” the CENTCOM chief said, but “you’re never going to be able to fully stamp it out.”

McKenzie said he ordered the high-risk raid that took Baghdadi’s life from CENTCOM’s Tampa, Florida, headquarters on Saturday morning after the United States received "fleeting" intelligence on his whereabouts that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) helped to develop.