Al-Qaeda: A senior al Qaeda leader, Salim Abu-Ahmad, has been killed in a drone strike in Syria, according to US defence officials.
Abu-Ahmad, who is said to be in charge of planning, funding, and approving trans-regional Al Qaeda attacks, was assassinated on September 20 in Syria’s Idlib province. He was in a vehicle on a rural road in rebel-controlled territory, but his identity was not revealed until Thursday evening.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also confirmed that the vehicle was transporting a militant associated with the terror group.
Images from the tree-lined dirt roadshow a heap of charred metal badly crumbled on the side, revealing only the car’s shape.
In the past, US forces have targeted the Idlib Province in their pursuit of various terrorist militants. It was also the site of the US-led airstrike that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who had been hiding there after fleeing eastern Syria.
The airstrike in Syria came just hours after the Pentagon announced that an Air Force general officer would investigate an August 29 drone attack in Afghanistan that killed an innocent aid worker and his seven children.
Large swaths of Idlib and neighbouring Aleppo province are still in the hands of the Syrian armed opposition, which is led by radical groups such as the once-al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
There are also over 4 million civilians in the area, the majority of whom have been displaced by previous bouts of violence in Syria’s 10-year conflict.
Al-Qaeda…
