Syria: Explosion kills Ahrar al-Sham Islamist group leader and other 28 senior commanders
An explosion killed the leader of one of Syria’s most powerful Islamist insurgent groups Ahrar al-Sham, the group said, and an organisation that monitors violence in the civil war said at least 28 of its senior commanders had died.
Ahrar al-Sham is a hardline Islamist group and part of the Islamic Front alliance that has been in armed conflict with the Islamic State group which has seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. It was at one point considered the strongest insurgent group in the Syrian civil war.
A statement posted on Ahrar al-Sham’s official Twitter feed said the blast had hit a meeting in Idlib province in northwest Syria and confirmed Hassan Aboud, the group’s leader, among at least 12 dead.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some 50 of the group’s leaders had been gathered at a house when the blast went off. Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, said the blast had occurred inside the meeting.