DAMASCUS: Al Qaeda in Iraq admitted yesterday to long-held suspicions it is behind jihadists fighting Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, as Washington said it was mulling new ways to drive him from power.
The rebel Free Syrian Army kept its distance from the jihadists, insisting its alliance with the key opposition fighting force was purely tactical and that its goal was a democratic Syria.
“The Al Nusra Front is simply a branch of the Islamic State of Iraq,” the head of the Al Qaeda in Iraq front group, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, said in a recording posted online.
Describing Al Nusra leader Abu Mohammed Al Jawlani as “one of our soldiers,” he said the two groups would merge under the banner of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Baghdadi’s comments came a day after an Al Nusra-style suicide bombing in the heart of Damascus killed at least 15 people and wounded 146.
They also came after Al Qaeda’s global chief, Ayman Al Zawahiri, urged rebels to fight to establish an Islamic state in Syria. AFP
