US drone strike in Syria kills top al-Qaida leader, jihadis say
Source: The Guardian
One of al-Qaida’s most senior global leaders has been killed by a US drone strike in north-west Syria, jihadi leaders have said.
Abu al-Khayr al-Masri – who has been part of the global jihadi organisation for three decades and was a son-in-law of its founder, Osama bin Laden – was killed on Sunday when a missile fired from a drone hit the small car in which he was travelling. Masri had also been a close aide to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, a fellow Egyptian.
On Monday, the Pentagon confirmed it had carried out a strike in north-west Syria, but did not say whom the attack had targeted. Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the al-Qaida-inspired group that Masri had worked alongside in Syria, acknowledged the death, as did individual jihadi leaders.
Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based writer on Islamic groups, said Masri’s death was a serious blow to al-Qaida. “His death is no less significant than that of Bin Laden (who was killed by a US raid in Pakistan in May 2011),” Hashimi said. “He was the ideological leader of the group in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and the number two in the organisation overall.”
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/27/us-drone-strike-in-syria-kills-top-al-qaida-leader-jihadis-say
Martin Chulov in Beirut and Tom McCarthy in New York
Monday 27 February 2017 11.44 GMT
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