Syria war: Rebel leader’s death linked to camp evacuation pause

Zahran Alloush, head of the powerful Jaish al-Islam Syrian rebel group, was killed on Friday east of Damascus, a monitoring group and Syria’s opposition said.

Defence experts say Alloush’s killing, combined with the disarray among the rebel forces, could strengthen Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s control over the rest of the area.

But it fell through after the Jaysh al Islam rebel group’s leader Zahran Alloush – through whose territory the convoy had been granted safe passage – was killed in an air strike on Friday, Manar said.

The group took part in a Syrian opposition meeting in Riyadh earlier this month that was meant to determine who would represent the rebels in negotiations with the Syrian government.

A years-long government siege of parts of Damascus controlled by a patchwork of rebel groups – of which Jaysh al Islam is the largest – has impeded the flow of food and humanitarian aid, starving many people to death in what rights group Amnesty International has described as a war crime.

A Syrian insurgent group whose commander was assassinated by an airstrike near the Syrian capital has appointed a successor, vowing to continue fighting both the Syrian government and the Islamic State group.

He is blamed by other opposition groups for the December 2013 kidnapping of four prominent activists including human rights activist and lawyer Razan Zaytouni.

In a rare sign of unity over Syria, the U.N. Security Council this month adopted a resolution backing a peace process to end the civil war.

Government supporters also celebrated his death, blaming his group for regularly shelling residential areas in Damascus. In a statement published by the state-run SANA News agency, the Syrian military boasted that it had been responsible for launching the airstrike that killed Alloush.

Syrian government forces booby-trapped a cluster of farm buildings in the southern Daraa province and detonated the explosives as several Islamic rebel factions gathered at the venue, killing 17 militants, opposition activists said yesterday. He had led rebel operations against pro-Assad army in Damascus and its countryside for almost three years after deserting the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and establishing his own rebel group.

Syrian state media reported the killings without the detail of a booby trap, but claimed to have “demolished” two different rebel “dens” in the town.

The Islamic State on Saturday released a new message purportedly from its reclusive leader, claiming that his self-styled “caliphate” is doing well despite an unprecedented alliance against it and criticizing the recently announced Saudi-led Islamic military coalition against terrorism.

The spokesman, Col Talal Selo, said the capture of the dam would help disrupt an IS supply line across the Euphrates and isolate the group between northern Aleppo and its territory east of the river.

“Their political philosophy and blueprint for the future is largely based on a similar reading of Islamic history and the Qur’an”. He had at times called for Alawites and Shiites to be cleansed from parts of Syria. In addition to Allouch, it said the airstrike killed “a large number of commanders of Ahrar al-Sham and Faylaq al-Rahman”. A government official has said the plan would see the evacuees transferred Saturday out of Qadam, Hajar al-Aswad and the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmuk and into northern Syria.

Without him Islamist fighters could lean towards further radicalisation and join jihadist groups Tabler adds.