Veteran Qaeda leader killed in Syria, says US

Washington D.C/ 9 February 2017.  At least eleven Al-Qaeda operatives, including a veteran leader and suicide bombing pioneer, were killed in a bombing raid in Syria.

According to the US Military, Abu Hani al-Masri, the Qaeda veteran, was one of those killed in the precision airstrikes near Idlib carried out on February 3-4.

Al-Masri was an early official in al-Qaeda, overseeing the group's training camps in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s as he worked with Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
 

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The Pentagon said, there "he recruited, indoctrinated, trained and equipped thousands of terrorists who subsequently spread throughout the region and the world."

He also helped found Egyptian Islamic Jihad "he first Sunni group to use suicide bombers in their terror attacks”, they said.

"These strikes disrupt al-Qaeda's ability to plot and direct external attacks targeting the US and our interests worldwide," said Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis.

The US has mostly focused its attacks in Syria on the Islamic State group. But in recent months, US forces have also launched several attacks against its al-Qaeda rivals.

Idlib province is largely occupied by the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, Fateh al-Sham, which has been allied to several Syrian rebel groups fighting the government. (PTI)

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