Pentagon says Khorasan Group leader killed in Syria air strike

But the Britain-based group said it was unclear whether the strike was carried out by the US-led coalition targeting IS or Russian warplanes that have also been carrying out strikes in Aleppo in recent days. Al-Nasr also maintained routes to funnel new recruits from Pakistan into Syria.

US military officials said Nasr and Fadhli were among a core group of al-Qaeda loyalists who shuttled between Iran and Pakistan for several years as the remnants of Osama bin Laden’s original network sought to survive years of USA drone attacks.

Some, however, claim the Khorasan Group doesn’t exist.

The Pentagon said Sunday that it had killed an extremist figure in Syria whom it identified as “the highest-ranking leader” in the Khorasan Group, a shadowy al-Qaeda faction that USA officials have accused in the past of plotting attacks against the United States. “He moved funds from donors in the Gulf region into Iraq and then to al Qaeda leaders from Pakistan to Syria”, a Pentagon spokesman said in a statement.

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He was killed in an air strike on Thursday in northwest Syria, it said.

They are thought to have embedded themselves within al-Qaeda’s local affiliate, the al-Nusra Front, and obtained land and buildings in its strongholds.

Former leader Fadhli fought alongside al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and was among the few trusted al Qaeda leaders who received advance notification of the September 11 attacks, according to the Pentagon.

Al-Nasr was listed as an alias for Abdul Mohsen Abdullah Ibrahim al-Sharikh, a Saudi national listed as a “specially designated global terrorist” by the US Treasury Department in 2014. In July, for instance, he was one of more than a dozen signatories on a statement vowing to continue to oppose the Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s self-declared “caliphate”.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of The Long War Journal.