BEIRUT // A senior commander in Syria’s former Al Qaeda affiliate, who was close to the global network’s top leader Ayman Al Zawahiri, has been killed in an airstrike, the group said on Monday.
Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, previously known as Jabhat Al Nusra, announced the death of Ahmed Salama Mabrouk shortly after the Pentagon said the United States had targeted a prominent member of the group in Syria. Navy Capt Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to provide further details.
The group said that Mabrouk – a veteran Egyptian jihadist also known as Abu Farag Al Masri – was killed in Syria’s northern Idlib province, which is controlled by an insurgent alliance that includes Jabhat Fatah Al Sham.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition monitoring group, said Mabrouk was killed when his vehicle was struck near the border with Turkey.
Another senior commander from the group, Abu Omar Saraqib, was killed in an airstrike last month.
Mabrouk was imprisoned in his native Egypt in 1981 in the sweep following the assassination of president Anwar Sadat. He later travelled to Afghanistan, where he became close to Al Zawahiri before travelling to Syria earlier this year.
Fatah Al Sham recently announced it was changing its name and severing ties with Al Qaeda in a video in which Mabrouk sat next to the group's top leader, Abu Mohammed Al Golani.
But in part because of the presence of Al Qaeda veterans like Mabrouk among its ranks, most experts still view the group as an Al Qaeda affiliate, and both the United States and Russia have vowed to keep striking it.
* Associated Press
