US drone strike in Syria kills top al-Qaida leader, jihadis say

One of al-Qaida’s most senior leaders has been killed by a US drone strike in north-west Syria, jihadi leaders have said.

Abu al-Khayr al-Masri – who has been part of the global jihadi organisation for three decades and was a son-in-law of its founder, Osama bin Laden – was killed on Sunday when a missile fired from a drone hit the small car in which he was travelling. Masri had also been a close aide to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, a fellow Egyptian.

On Monday, the Pentagon confirmed it had carried out a strike in north-west Syria, but did not say whom the attack had targeted. Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the al-Qaida-inspired group that Masri had worked alongside in Syria, acknowledged the death, as did individual jihadi leaders.

In 2005, the US government identified Masri as a terrorist associate and said he “was responsible for coordinating al-Qaida’s work with other terrorist organisations”. He has been implicated in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in which more than 200 people, mostly civilians, died.

The 59-year-old was killed by a drone strike on a car in Idlib, Syria, according to local reports. Middle East Institute scholar Charles Lister, a leading Washington-based analyst of the Syrian conflict, linked on Twitter to video said to be from the scene of the strike.

In an email to the Guardian, Lister said: “As the deputy leader of al-Qaida globally, the reported death of Abu al-Khayr al-Masri in Syria is the biggest blow to al-Qaida since the killing of Nasir al-Wuhayshi in Yemen in June 2015.

“As a long-time member of al-Qaida’s central Shura Council and one of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s closest long-time confidantes, Abu al-Khayr was jihadi royalty, meaning his death will almost certainly necessitate some form of response, whether from Syria or elsewhere in the world.”

The killing of an unusually high-profile al-Qaida figure seemed likely to be hailed by the Trump administration as an important national security victory. The president has come under harsh criticism after a Navy Seal was killed in an unevenly executed assault in Yemen last month.

Masri, also known as Ahmad Hasan Abu al Khayr, fought alongside Bin Laden in Afghanistan and spent more than a decade in detention in Iran. According to the Long War Journal, which tracks the movement of jihadis, he was released in 2015 in exchange for an Iranian diplomat who had been kidnapped in Yemen.

He then travelled to Syria, belatedly linking up with an advance guard of al-Qaida heavyweights who had been sent by senior leaders in late-2013. Al-Qaida had intended to use the chaos of the Syrian war to establish a new sphere of influence. US and British intelligence agencies believe it developed close links with the Nusra front, as well as forming an independent organisation, named Khorasan, which plotted attacks in Europe and beyond.

Masri “was a veteran of jihadi conflicts in Egypt, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Pakistan”, Lister said. “[He] was the terrorist group’s key intermediary with its affiliates and other jihadi groups across the world.

“His marriage to one of Osama bin Laden’s daughters placed him at the beating heart of al-Qaida early on.”

Masri travelled to Syria to support the Nusra front, analysts said. The two groups claimed to split in 2016, a move US officials dismissed as a rebranding effort. In a video broadcast to followers, Masri announced the split on behalf of Zawahiri.

Masri’s presence in Syria was identified by Lister in a May 2016 piece describing the transfer by al-Qaida of “a number of highly influential jihadi figures from its central leadership circles into Syria”.

The immediate circumstances of Masri’s death were unclear. Video online showed a tan four-door Kia sedan destroyed at a roadside with a large hole in its canopy but its windscreen mostly intact.

The strike zone was unusually far west for a US drone strike.

The US government designated Masri to be an al-Qaida associate in October 2005. He was born Abdullah Muhammad Rajab abd al-Rahman in Kafr al-Shaykh, Egypt, on 3 November 1957, according to the US Treasury Department.

Reports of the killing emerged two days before Donald Trump is scheduled to speak to a joint session of Congress, in the first major policy address of his presidency.

The news emerged as the Trump administration came under criticism from the father of the Navy Seal killed in a raid in Yemen last month. Bill Owens demanded an investigation into what he called a “stupid mission” that killed his son, William “Ryan” Owens.