February 27, 2014 | Quote
Jihadist Vendetta Takes Out Qaeda Leader
Al-Qaeda’s top leader in Syria was killed on Sunday in a suicide bombing in the city of Aleppo that some rebels say was carried out by a jihadist group recently disowned by Qaeda’s top brass in Pakistan.
The killing of Abu Khalid al-Suri, a veteran jihadist who fought alongside Osama bin Laden, is likely to prompt a redoubling of rebel infighting in northern Syria, which has already seen more than 2,000 insurgents killed since early January, according to opposition activists.
Al-Suri was killed in the Al-Halq area of Aleppo along with half-a-dozen companions, in an attack that pro-opposition analysts and jihadists blamed on the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS),
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Al-Suri’s slaying “ups the ante in a big way,” says Thomas Joscelyn, an al-Qaeda watcher for the U.S.-based think tank The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “Assuming ISIS was responsible, and they are the most likely but not only suspects, it is a direct shot at al-Qaeda senior leadership’s authority.”
He adds: “The key now is how al-Qaeda and its preferred rebel groups, Ahrar al-Sham and al Nusra, respond. The longer al-Baghdadi lasts, the stronger ISIS becomes a rival to the al-Qaeda-backed groups. This has turned into a full-fledged blood feud.”