“Al Qaeda stays a worldwide drive with its networks and branches all over the world,” Ambassador Nathan A. Gross sales, the State Division’s counte
“Al Qaeda stays a worldwide drive with its networks and branches all over the world,” Ambassador Nathan A. Gross sales, the State Division’s counterterrorism coordinator, mentioned in a convention name with reporters on Wednesday after releasing the division’s annual nation experiences on terrorism.
Mr. al-Aruri, who was also referred to as Abu al Qassam, was a detailed companion and brother-in-law of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who headed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia till he was killed by an American airstrike in Iraq in 2006, in response to Thomas Joscelyn, a senior editor of FDD’s Lengthy Struggle Journal, a web site run by the Basis for Protection of Democracies that tracks army strikes in opposition to militant teams.
In 2015, Mr. al-Aruri was one among 5 senior Qaeda figures freed by Iran in alternate for an Iranian diplomat held in Yemen. His launch introduced a extremely skilled operative again to the sector, and after his arrival in Syria he slowly climbed the ranks to develop into Al Qaeda’s army boss after which the de facto chief there.
The brand new Qaeda department, referred to as Hurras al-Din, emerged in early 2018 after a number of factions broke away from a bigger affiliate in Syria. It’s the successor to the Khorasan Group, a small however harmful group of hardened senior Qaeda operatives that Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s chief, despatched to Syria to plot assaults in opposition to the West.
The Khorasan Group was successfully worn out by a sequence of American airstrikes a number of years in the past. However with as many as 2,000 fighters, together with seasoned leaders from Jordan and Egypt, Hurras al-Din is way bigger and has operated in areas the place Russian air defenses have largely shielded them from American airstrikes and the persistent stare of American surveillance planes.
Moscow dispatched army assist and advisers to Syria in late 2015 to help the beleaguered authorities of President Bashar al-Assad.
Hurras al-Din was initially led by Abu Hammam al-Shami, one other Qaeda veteran, however a United Nations report mentioned final 12 months that Mr. al-Aruri took cost of the group sooner or later.