Washington: The US military said Wednesday that it had killed eleven Al Qaida operatives, including a veteran leader and suicide bombing pioneer, in a bombing raid in Syria.
The Pentagon said Abu Hani Al Masri, the Al Qaida 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 Qaida, overseeing the group’s training camps in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s as he worked with Al Qaida founder Osama Bin Laden and current leader Ayman Al Zawahiri.
There “he recruited, indoctrinated, trained and equipped thousands of terrorists who subsequently spread throughout the region and the world,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
“These strikes disrupt Al Qaida’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 Daesh. But in recent months, US forces have also launched several attacks against its Al Qaida rivals.
Idlib province is largely occupied by the former Syrian branch of Al Qaida, Fateh Al Sham, which has been allied to several Syrian rebel groups fighting the government.
