BEIRUT: US-led air strikes in Syria hit Al Qaeda-linked militants and an Islamist rebel brigade in a rare expansion of weeks-long raids targeting the Islamic State group, a monitor said yesterday.
American media reported that 24-year-old French bomb-maker David Drugeon, a Muslim convert who joined an Al Qaeda offshoot, the Khorasan group, was killed in the overnight strikes.
“We think we got him,” a senior US defence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that it would take time to confirm his death with absolute certainty.
The raids hit Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front for only the second time since the US-led coalition began bombings in the war-torn country on September 23, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Strikes near the Turkish border also targeted the Ahrar Al Sham rebel group for the first time, the British-based monitoring group said.
The Ahrar Al Sham rebel brigade is believed to have between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters and espouses a conservative ideology, though it has not expressed the same transnational jihadist aspirations as Al Nusra or IS.
But many of its top leaders have ties to Al Qaeda and the group has fought alongside Al Nusra against other moderate rebel groupings in parts of northern Syria.
US media reported that an air strike hit a vehicle in Syria’s Idlib province, believed to be carrying Drugeon.
Fox News, citing “well-placed military sources”, said the car’s driver lost a leg and was not expected to live, while a passenger believed to be Drugeon was killed.
“We are still assessing the outcome of the attack,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said.
Also yesterday, Syrian troops backed by pro-regime militiamen recaptured the Shaer gas field in central Homs, state television reported, a week after IS jihadists overran parts of it.
The air strikes against Al Nusra also killed several jihadists and two children in Idlib province while six jihadists were killed in raids in Aleppo, according to the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.
The Al Qaeda affiliate confirmed the strikes on Twitter, saying they were carried out by “the alliance of Crusaders and Arabs on Al Nusra positions, causing deaths, mostly of civilians”.
The latest raids came after Al Nusra made gains against Western-backed rebel fighters in the Idlib region.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Ahrar Al Sham also confirmed its base near the Bab Al Hawa border crossing had been hit, saying the raids “benefit only the criminal (Syrian) regime”.
AFP
