Mazen al-Shami, an opposition activist based near Damascus, said Russian warplanes fired 10 missiles at the site where Allouch and top commanders in his group were meeting in Otaya.
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“Syrian state media report the commander, Zahran Alloush, who led the rebel Army of Islam, died in an attack on the East Ghouta suburb of Damascus”.
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The head and founder of one of the largest rebel factions in Syria was killed in an airstrike during a meeting of opposition forces there, officials said Friday. Syria’s state-run news agency, SANA, reported it was a Syrian special operation and aired aerial footage it said was from the strike.
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It came as around 2,000 Islamist fighters, including members of Islamic State and al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, prepared to be evacuated by bus from a rebel-held part of southern Damascus that has been besieged by government forces for years.
The death of Alloush, if confirmed, could have significant repercussions on the grinding battles taking place just beyond government-held Damascus in suburbs controlled by rebel forces.
In a rare sign of unity over Syria, the UN Security Council last week adopted a resolution backing a peace process to end the civil war.
But unlike harder-line armed groups, the Army of Islam has shown a recent interest in taking part in politics, said Mr Ibrahim Hamidi, a Syrian correspondent for Al Hayat, a pan-Arab newspaper.
Earlier this month, it participated in opposition talks in Riyadh, which resulted in an framework for peace talks with the Assad regime.
“Alloush’s martyrdom should be a turning point in the history of the revolution and rebel groups should realise they are facing an war of extermination and uprooting by (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s regime”, said Labib al Nahhas, a senior figure in the main Ahrar al-Sham rebel group. Syrian government helicopter gunships have struck a suburb of the capital, Damascus, a day after airstrikes on nearby areas killed more than 40 people, opposition activists said.
Alloush, a one-time building contractor and son of an influential Salafist preacher now living in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in 2009 on charges of weapons possession and placed in prison.
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The Army of Islam group swiftly appointed Essam al-Buwaydhani, a field commander known as Abu Hammam, as the new leader of the group, replacing Allouch. The group’s surviving leaders were said to be discussing a succession plan. He denies holding them although they were kidnapped from an area under Army of Islam control.
