US forces have killed a leader of the jihadist group, Hurras al Din, affiliated with the Al Qaeda terrorist network, in a drone attack perpetrated in Idlib province, the last opposition stronghold in northwestern Syria, various sources reported on Tuesday. sources.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO based in the United Kingdom and a wide network of collaborators on the ground, indicated at dawn that a motorcycle was hit by the bombing of a drone on the road that connects the city of Idlib , capital of the homonymous region, with the town of Qaminas.
The organization attributed the action to the international coalition led by Washington fighting the Islamic State jihadist group in Iraq and Syria, without offering further details.
However, the Central Command of the US Armed Forces later assumed responsibility for the bombing and confirmed that the driver and only passenger of the motorcycle died in it, a high command of Hurras al Din or Guardians of Religion identified as Abu Hamza al-Yemeni.
“The removal of this senior leader will disrupt al Qaeda’s ability to carry out attacks against US citizens, our partners and innocent civilians around the world,” Central Command said in a statement.
Some allied formations of the network founded by Osama bin Laden use Syrian territory as a “refuge” and from there they plan and coordinate operations outside the Arab country.
For this same reason, the European Union (EU) included Hurras al Din and two of its top leaders a little less than a month ago on the community list of entities sanctioned for belonging to or being linked to the Islamic State or Al Qaeda.
He has considered that the Guardians of Religion operate “in the name of and under the umbrella of Al Qaeda”, in addition to planning “terrorist” operations outside the Syrian borders, running training camps in the Arab nation and having welcomed into their ranks foreign fighters from European countries.
The Sunni Islamist group barely has any operational capacity in Idlib, where the Levant Liberation Agency, an alliance that includes the former al-Qaeda branch in Syria and which controls most of the province, has launched various campaigns of arrests against Hurras al Din.
In the last couple of years, the Agency has tried to disassociate itself from its past with the network.
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