Coalition airstrikes kill 14 Al Nusrah Front members

The Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, has released a series of photos purportedly showing the aftermath of coalition airstrikes in Syria. The group claims that 14 members were killed. The photos can be seen below.

It is not clear if one or two Nusrah Front locations were targeted. On one of its official Twitter feeds, Nusrah’s propagandists say the coalition bombings targeted the organization’s headquarters in Jabal Al Zawiya, which is in the province of Idlib.

Separately, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), citing “activists,” reported that 15 Nusrah Front fighters (as opposed to 14) were killed after “aerial bombardment carried out by US-led coalition warplanes on 2 posts…in the village of al-Towamah in the western countryside of Aleppo.” SOHR claimed that the fighters were mainly Turks.

While the coalition has bombed Nusrah Front locations since late 2014, most of the airstrikes in Syria have targeted the Islamic State, Nusrah’s jihadist rival.

The initial round of bombings on Al Nusrah Front occurred in September 2014, when the US targeted al Qaeda’s so-called “Khorasan group,” an elite group of al Qaeda veterans tasked with launching attacks in the West. Members of the Khorasan group also double as insurgency leaders within the upper echelon of Nusrah, which has played an instrumental role in the rebels’ advances against the Assad regime this year.

The last US airstrike that targeted the Khorasan group took place between Nov. 17-19, and “struck and destroyed a storage facility associated with the Khorasan Group,” CENTCOM said in a press release.

In the past, the Nusrah Front has posted photos similar to the set seen below.

Photos showing the aftermath of the airstrikes on Al Nusrah Front positions

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Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD's Long War Journal.

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