(Beirut) One of the historic jihadist leaders of Syria’s last rebel bastion, Abu Maria al-Qahtani, co-founder of the Al-Nusra Front, was killed in a suicide attack, his organization and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced on Friday. man (OSDH).
The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group of which he was a member, in command in the rebel region of Idlib (northwest), blamed the assassination on the competing jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
Al-Qahtani “was martyred in a cowardly attack carried out by an IS member equipped with an explosive belt” in Sarmada, north of Idlib, the HTS news site Amjad said.
The OSDH, an NGO which has a vast network of sources in Syria, confirmed this attack, without commenting on its origin. The attack has not been claimed at this stage.
Two people who accompanied al-Qahtani were seriously injured in the explosion, according to the OSDH.
Al-Qahtani was released on March 7 from prison, where he had spent seven months for “treason”, before being cleared by the HTS and released.
Born in 1976 in Iraq, Al-Qahtani, whose real name is Maysar Ali Musa Abdallah al-Juburi, has been on the list of people sanctioned by the United States since 2012 for his links with the Al-Qaeda group, including the Al Front. -Nusra, later HTS, was the emanation in Syria.
He had also been on the United Nations Security Council sanctions list since 2014, according to which he had “left Mosul [Irak] to join Syria in 2011” in order to “bring the ideology of Al-Qaeda” to this country.
In 2012, he became “the main religious and military commander of the Al-Nusra Front in eastern Syria and also headed a training camp for the network,” according to this source.
Considered a member of the “moderate” wing of the Al-Nusra Front, he subsequently called for it to break with Al-Qaeda.