Suicide bomber kills head of Syrian rebel group

The death of Hassan Aboud, leader of Ahrar Al Sham, an ultraconservative Syrian rebel group, is expected to further weaken Syria's already shaky armed opposition.

BEIRUT // The leader of an ultraconservative Islamic rebel group in Syria was killed in a suicide bombing along with other of its top officials, weakening the ranks of the country’s already shaky armed opposition.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack that killed Hassan Aboud and other leading members of Ahrar Al Sham, part of the strongest front that challenged the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant, which holds wide swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

But given that forces loyal to President Bashar Assad’s government do not typically use suicide bombers, it appeared likely that forces in the murky mix of opposition fighters in Syria’s 3-year-old civil war were involved.

The attack struck a high-level meeting of Ahrar Al Sham – or The Islamic Movement of Free Men of the Levant – held in the northwestern town of Ram Hamdan in the Syrian province of Idlib, one of its strongholds.

A statement from the group said the blast killed Aboud, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Abdullah Al Hamwi, along with 11 other top leaders.

“They were martyred ... in an explosion inside their meeting headquarters,” said a statement on the Twitter feed of the Islamic Front, the rebel coalition to which it belonged.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian state media also reported Aboud’s death.

An activist collective called the Edlib News Network said over 40 people died in a suicide bombing. The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists in Syria for its reports, said “tens” of people were killed.

Differing casualty figures are routine immediately after attacks in Syria.

Ahrar Al Sham was part of the Islamic Front, an alliance of seven powerful conservative and ultraconservative rebel groups that merged in late November. The Islamic Front wants to bring rule by Shariah law in Syria and rejects the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, but cooperates with some of their fighters on the ground.

While Ahrar Al Sham was an ultra-conservative group, its leadership, including Aboud, sought to balance “the group’s fundamentalist platform with a relatively pragmatic political strategy”, said Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst for the International Crisis Group. Aboud had even once met with a top US state department official, Mr Bonsey said.

Mr Bonsey said it was unlikely that Ahrar Al Sham would have been a direct recipient of American aid, because, despite its moderation, it still remained too hard-line for the West. But the bombing likely would significantly disrupt or possibly destroy the group as a whole, he said.

“Ahar Al Sham had been one of the best led and most organised, and overall, one of the most effective groups on the ground,” Mr Bonsey said. “It’s a loss of talent within the rebel spectrum as a whole. Ahrar Al Sham was one of the strongest, if not the strongest rebel group, and the question is, what will it look like going forward?”

Syria’s conflict began as large demonstrations against Mr Assad’s rule that collapsed into a war with sectarian undertones. Rebels are overwhelmingly from Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority. Many in Syria’s minority groups have backed Mr Assad or remained neutral, fearing for their fates should rebels come to power.

The conflict has been further complicated by militants of the ISIL group, whose mass killings, beheadings and targeting of minority groups has sparked international outrage.

* Associated Press