US airstrike targets Egyptian al Qaeda veteran in Syria

[TomSea]

US airstrike targets Egyptian al Qaeda veteran in Syria

By Thomas Joscelyn | October 3, 2016 | tjoscelyn@gmail.com | @thomasjoscelyn



Jabhat Fath al Sham (“Conquest of the Levant Front”), al Qaeda’s rebranded branch in Syria, announced earlier today that Ahmed Salama Mabrouk has been killed in an airstrike in the Idlib province. Mabrouk, an Egyptian al Qaeda veteran, was also known as Abu Faraj al Masri.

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis confirmed that Mabrouk was the target of an American bombing, but said US officials are still working to confirm his status. “We can confirm that we targeted a prominent Al Qaeda member in Syria, and we are assessing the results of the operation at this time,” Davis said, according to Agence France-Presse. “This is a prominent Al Qaeda leader,” Davis emphasized.

In addition to Jabhat Fath al Sham’s (“JFS”) official Twitter feed, several jihadi accounts commented on the reports of Mabrouk’s demise. Abu Saeed al Halabi, a Dutch JFS member, tweeted that Mabrouk’s death had been “confirmed.” Mabrouk was “martyred after being targeted by a coalition airstrike on his car in W-Idlib,” Halabi tweeted.

Read More At: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/10/us-airstrike-targets-egyptian-al-qaeda-veteran-in-syria.php