Beirut: The military chief and several top commanders of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front have been reported killed in northwestern Syria, where the jihadist militia has been making major gains in recent months.
Syrian state media, a monitoring group and a local activist reported that Abu Hammam Al Shami (pictured) had been killed, but provided contradictory information on the circumstances of his death.
Official Nusra sources did not announce the death of the jihadist, a Syrian national believed to have fought with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
“Shami... was killed with a number of other leaders during a special operation by the army” in Idlib province, Syrian state news agency SANA reported, without specifying a date.
Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, also said the commander had been killed but that the circumstances of his death were unclear.
“Shami died of injuries on Thursday, but it is not clear when he sustained them,” Abdel Rahman said.
He said Shami may have been one of five Nusra leaders wounded in an air strike in Idlib province on February 27 by the US-led coalition attacking jihadists in Syria.
An official Nusra statement that day named two commanders killed in the strike but did not mention Shami.
Local Syrian activist Ibrahim Al Idlibi said Shami had been killed in the February raid but that Nusra had not published his name due to the “sensitivity” of the information.
“Because it operates in a decentralised manner, not top down, the loss of a leader is something that Nusra can recover from with minimal damage,” said Lina Khatib, director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre think tank.
Thomas Pierret, a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, called Shami’s death a “severe blow” but said that the impact should not be overstated.
“Organisations of this type are very well structured and prepared for the loss of important leaders,” he said. AFP
