During the afternoon, a massive airstrike struck an Islamist meeting at the village of Kafr Jales (Idlib) which subsequently killed the Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda) spokesman Abu Firas al-Suri along with some 25 terrorists of Jund al-Aqsa.

Additionally, Abu Firas’ son, an al-Nusra Front commander called Azzam al-Azdi was also killed in the air raid, while many Uzbeks were reportedly among the dead.

Syrian Suri, real name Radwan Nammous, fought against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan where he met Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his mentor Abdullah Azzam before returning to Syria in 2011, according to supporters on Twitter.

Abu Firas al-Suri, a 65-year old Syrian man born in the town of Madaya (near Damascus), has been involved with Islamists in Syria for decades. For instance, he was embedded with military insurgents of the Muslim Brotherhood during their revolt in the city of Hama in 1982 which was subsequently brutally crushed by former president, Hafez al-Assad.

Abu Firas al-Suri later joined al-Qaeda and was reunified with his Jabhat al-Nusra comrades in Syria in 2012.

Meanwhile, it is currently unclear which war planes carried out the air raid, although some media outlets have reported the US to behind it.

However, the US-coalition is almost exclusively focused on ISIS and rarely strikes rebel forces, many of whom the US administration backs. Furthermore, the vast majority of airstrikes carried out in the Idlib governorate are conducted by either Russian or Syrian pilots; ABNA24 reported.

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