Free Republic

The leader of an al Qaeda-linked group allegedly bent on attacking the West has been killed in an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, U.S. officials said Sunday. Sanafi al-Nasr, a Saudi citizen whose real name is Abdul Mohsen Adballah Ibrahim al Charekh, was the highest-ranking member of the Khorasan Group -- a collection of veteran al Qaeda jihadis which had moved into Syria, the Pentagon said in a statement. He was killed in an airstrike in northwest Syria on Thursday, the statement said. Nasr, who was once al Qaeda's chief financial officer and had been designated a Specially...

A senior leader from Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, has been reportedly killed alongside two other members of the terrorist group in the province of Aleppo. Sanafi Al-Nasr, who was allegedly killed in an airstrike near the town of Dana, was Al-Qaeda’s senior strategist and an important power broker, the Iranian Fars news agency reports, citing jihadist sources close to the killed militant leader. Al-Nusra released several photos showing a car hit by an air strike along with several bodies of the dead militants, although their identities were not verified. However, jihadists claimed on social media that Al-Nasr had...

Tension in Syria between rival rebel groups reached new heights as the US threatened to strike President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Radical armed groups - some with alleged links to al-Qaeda - say they fear US missile attacks against Syrian military installations would also target them, and that the West was seeking to use moderate rebel factions to keep them in check - much as the US-funded "Awakening Councils" did in Iraq. The result is increasing animosity in Syria between seld-described "jihadist" groups and Western-backed fighters. The Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), an armed group operating in Syria and...