Pentagon announced that the strike which killed a al-Qaeda members in Syria was an American.

Pentagon announced that the strike which killed a al-Qaeda members in Syria was an American.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the US military conducted an air raid on a meeting of officials of Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front on Sunday in northeast Syria, targeting Abu Firas al-Suri and other leaders.

"We assess that Al-Qaeda senior leader Abu Firas al-Suri was in that meeting and we are working to confirm his death," Cook said on Monday.

He said Suri was a Syrian national and a "legacy" Al-Qaeda member who fought in Afghanistan in the late 1980s and 1990s.

He "worked with Osama bin Laden and other founding Al-Qaeda members to train terrorists and conduct attacks globally," Cook said, adding that Sunday's strike killed several other militants.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Suri, his son and at least 20 militants of Al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa and other insurgents from Uzbekistan were killed in strikes on positions in Idlib province.

Seven were high-ranking militants, the Britain-based Observatory said.
Suri, whose real name was Radwan Nammous, fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met Bin Laden and the founding father of the so-called “global jihad,” Abdullah Azzam, before returning to Syria in 2011.