Syria's militant Jabhat Fateh al Sham, formerly the Nusra Front, said on Monday that Egyptian cleric Abu al Faraj al Masri, a prominent member of the militant group, had been killed in a strike by the U.S.-led coalition.
A statement posted to social media said Sheikh Abu al Faraj al Masri, whose real name is Shekih Ahmad Salamah Mabrouk, a member of the group's religious Shura council, had been killed in a strike in the rebel-held northwestern province of Idlib.
Jihadist sources had earlier said al-Masri was killed when an unidentified drone hit the vehicle in which he was traveling. A U.S defense official confirmed to Reuters a strike had targeted a prominent al Qaeda member on Monday but said Washington was still assessing its result.
Since the U.S.-led coalition launched operations in Syria primarily against Islamic State militants, air strikes have also targeted Nusra Front figures, killing scores.
Only last month, Abu Hajer al Homsi, the top commander of Jabhat Fateh al Sham, as the Nusra Front is now known, Abu Hajer al Homsi, was killed in an air strike in rural Aleppo province. Homsi's nom de guerre was Abu Omar Saraqeb.
Masri, a 60-year-old cleric whose real name was Sheikh Ahmad Salamah Mabrouk, was one of the leading companions of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri during his presence in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, according to a jihadist rebel source.
The source said that like other foreign jihadists, he came to Syria to join Nusra Front after being freed from Egyptian prison during the rule of President Mohamed Mursi, an Islamist who was toppled by the military in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.
