BEIRUT — Drone strikes Monday killed two militant
commanders close to Al-Qaeda in the Idlib region of northwest Syria, a war
monitor said.
The raids were carried out by the US-led international
coalition battling militants in Syria and Iraq, the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights said.
اضافة اعلان
The US military acknowledged killing an Al-Qaeda official,
shortly after the coalition told AFP it had not carried out any strikes in
Idlib province on Monday.
"US forces conducted a kinetic counter-terrorism strike
near Idlib,
Syria, today, on a senior al-Qaeda leader," a US Central
Command spokeswoman, Lt. Josie Lynne Lenny, said in a statement.
"Initial indications are that we struck the individual
we were aiming for, and there are no indications of civilian casualties as a
result of the strike," she said.
The strikes targeted a vehicle on the road leading from
Idlib city to Binnish further north, according to the Observatory.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that one of the
commanders killed was Tunisian, while the other was from Yemen or Saudi Arabia,
without identifying the group they belonged to.
The Idlib region is dominated by Syria's former Al-Qaeda
affiliate, but rebels and other extremist militants are also present.
Extremist Islamist factions have been the target of Syrian,
Russian, US and international coalition strikes in the past.
Nine terrorists were killed in October 2019 in Russian air
strikes on Idlib province, while a US strike a month earlier killed at least 40
terrorist leaders.
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