Daily Times

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon said that eleven militants linked to Al-Qaeda, including a senior operative, were killed in two US sorties in Syria’s Idlib province.

According to Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said in a statement on Wednesday that US warplanes hit a building where a meeting of Al-Qaeda members was underway, killing 10 terrorists.

Moreover, another raid on February 4 targeted a high-profile Al-Qaeda operative Abu Hani al-Masri, suspected of planning multiple terror attacks including a foiled plot to bomb the US Embassy in Albania in 1998. Al-Masri is believed to have belonged to a clique of Al-Qaeda’s top commanders who had close ties to Osama Bin Laden as well as the current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The statement said that Al-Masri had a lengthy record of terrorism-related crimes. He was responsible for the creation and operation of various Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in the 1980s and ’90s, where he recruited, indoctrinated and equipped thousands of terrorists. Pentagon says al-Masri has become the fourth Al-Qaeda leader it killed since the start of the year.

A Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon had earlier reported that the raids on February 3 and February 4 were precision strikes, one of them deliberately targeting al-Masri.

Meanwhile, opposition activists in the rebel-held Idlib province have claimed that the recent bombing spree is targeting innocent civilians and up to 30 people have died due to Tuesday’s strikes in Idlib.