The US has launched several strikes targeting Hurras al-Din figures in recent weeks [Getty]
The US military said Saturday it had killed a senior member of Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch Hurras al-Din, which announced its dissolution last month, in an air strike in the country’s northwest.
On Friday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) forces “conducted a precision air strike in northwest Syria, killing Wasim Tahsin Bayraqdar, a senior leadership facilitator of the terrorist organisation Hurras al-Din,” the military said in a statement.
Bayraqdar is the brother of Syria’s current religious endowments minister, Samer Bayraqdar. The Syrian Islamic Council, which is made up of mainstream Muslim religious figures, offered their condolences to the minister following the strike.
It is the latest US strike this year against alleged Hurras al-Din figures in Syria. Along with its Western and Arab allies, the United States has said that Syria must not serve as a base for “terrorist” groups after the toppling of president Bashar al-Assad in December.
The northwest was the stronghold of interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group before it led the rebel offensive that toppled Assad in December.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said a drone strike on a car killed Bayraqdar.
While the US claimed Bayraqdar was an active member of Hurras al-Din, this was disputed by Mohammed Munir al-Faqir, a Syrian researcher, who said that he had left the group over five years ago after becoming disillusioned.
Al-Faqir said in a Facebook post that Bayraqdar started out as an activist in the Syrian revolution which broke out in 2011 and expressed support at the time for a “free and democratic” Syria. He later joined radical groups as the conflict progressed and after one of his brothers was detained and tortured by the regime.
He added that Bayraqdar had abandoned all militant and political activity for the past five years and devoted himself to commercial business.
Last Sunday, CENTCOM said it killed “a senior finance and logistics official” in Hurras al-Din.
That came after CENTCOM last month reported killing another senior Hurras al-Din operative, Muhammad Salah al-Zabir, in an air strike also in the northwest.
The US-based SITE Intelligence Group said Hurras al-Din was founded in February 2018.
The group did not publicly confirm its allegiance to Al-Qaeda until its dissolution announcement in January.
Hurras al-Din dissolved in line with orders from Sharaa, who has called on all armed group to disband.
The United States designated Hurras al-Din as a “terrorist” organisation in 2019.
