Citing Syrian rebel sources, Reuters reports that the strike appeared to be carried out by a USA drone, a claim that the Pentagon declined to confirm.
Advertisement
ISIS has also suffered leadership losses in recent weeks.
On Friday, Al-Nusra and its allies pushed regime loyalists out of Al-Eis, a strategic town in Aleppo province.
But it is not clear whether the administration believes it is authorized to strike the Al Nusra Front as a target separate from al Qaeda. A second round of talks is due to begin on Monday in Geneva.
Regime troops on Sunday also seized the city of Al-Qaryatayn, one of the last IS strongholds in central Syria, according to state television. But the Nusra Front coordinates combat operations with other rebels, including groups that are parties to the cease-fire.
Forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad ride on a pick-up truck in the town of al-Qaryatain, Syria, after they recaptured it. A warplane was shot down Tuesday in Aleppo.
The Observatory said Wednesday that 588 civilian citizens – 214 of them children and women – were killed in March, despite a UN-brokered ceasefire. Hany al-Khaled of the Sham Revolutionary Brigades group, an affiliate of the Levant Front, said the attack had been repelled and Shi’ite militias fighting with the government had suffered heavy losses.
Sputnik News reported that the source said: “Militants have downed a warplane, which had been on a combat duty in the province of Aleppo”. Though Nusra is not part of the deal, its fighters are deployed near rebel groups that are.
Despite repeated infractions on both sides, the cease-fire – the product of negotiations involving the United States, which supports some rebel groups, and Russian Federation, which supports Assad – had held to a surprising degree.
Infighting among Takfiri militant groups in Syria has left a militant, who ate the heart of a dead Syrian soldier about three years ago, dead in the country’s northwestern province of Idlib.
Surprisingly absent from the battlefield were the Russian warplanes so instrumental in bringing gains to the government.
Originally from Madaya, near Damascus, Abu Firas was a fervent opponent of Islamic State’s style and ideologically at odds with the militant group that occupies parts of Syria and Iraq.
Advertisement
“Shame on you, you filthy pig!” some of the fighters said as they surrounded the battered and bruised pilot.
