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Commander with Syria’s al Qaida affiliate ‘killed in air strike’

It did not say which country’s forces had carried out the air strike.

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A top commander of the Syrian militant group Jabhat Fateh al Sham has been killed in an airstrike on the outskirts of Aleppo, it was reported on Thursday.

Since the US -led coalition was launched, air strikes have targeted Nusra Front figures in Syria, killing scores.

The group changed its name after Al-Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, rallied jihadis across Syria to bring about an Islamic caliphate.

The Syrian Observatory for Human rights confirmed that airstrikes by unknown warplanes – from the US-led coalition, Russian Federation or the Syrian regime – hit an Army of Conquest meeting in urban Aleppo in northern Syria and killed Omar Sarakeb and another military commander named as Abu Muslem al-Shami.

The airstrike targeted a Jabhat Fateh al-Sham military meeting in the Aleppo village of Kafar Naha.

Unconfirmed reports said several other senior figures in the group were killed or injured, Reuters reported.

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The move, which it said was to remove a pretext used by world powers to attack Syrian civilians, may also have been an attempt to appeal to Syrians who have long had deep misgivings about Nusra’s links with al-Qaida and the presence of foreign jihadists in its ranks. Washington said altering the name of the group did not signal a shedding of its hardline al Qaeda-style ideology.

Syria's al-Qaida announces commander killed in airstrike