The Pentagon said in a statement on Thursday, “Mohammad Habib Boussadoun al-Tunisi, an al-Qaeda external operations leader, was killed by a US precision airstrike Jan. 17 near Idlib, Syria.”

“The deceased terrorist, a Tunisian, was involved in extremist facilitation and external operations and has been connected to terrorist plots to attack Western targets,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said.

In a separate statement, Cook said American forces killed al-Qaeda facilitator Abd al-Jalil al-Muslimi in a precision airstrike near Saraqib in northwestern Syria on January 12.

The statement said the terrorist was trained by Taliban militants in the late 1990s in Afghanistan. “He had extensive and long-standing ties to numerous al-Qaeda external operations planners and terrorists.”

According to Cook, both men were Tunisian.

This is while Cuba has denounced US airstrikes in Syria, saying they violate the Arab country’s sovereignty as they are not permitted by Damascus.

Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations Humberto Rivero made the criticism during a UN Security Council meeting in New York on Wednesday.

“We demand the cessation of the violations of Syrian sovereignty and the foreign military presence without the consent and the coordination of operations with the Syrian government, the only legitimately elected authority in the country,” Rivero said.

The United States, along with some of its allies, has been conducting air raids against what are said to be terrorists inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

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