‘We are still shocked’: the Syrians who discovered Islamic State’s leader was their neighbour

Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi had been an unseen phantom in a safehouse in the town of Atme until his violent end on Thursday

For many months, the man on the motorbike would come and go from the house and a mechanic's workshop in the Syrian border town of Atme.

No other adult in the three-story building ever seemed to emerge, least of all a second man who signed a lease last spring and moved in with two women and three young children, never to be seen publicly again until the early hours of Thursday.