Syrian army kills top Nusra Front leader, state media reports

The Syrian army carried out an operation that killed the military commander of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front on Thursday in northwestern Syria, Syrian state media reported. Abu Humam al-Shami was killed by an explosion during a meeting of Nusra Front leaders in Idlib province. Insurgent sources said at least three other Nusra Front commanders were killed in the blast. The Syrian state news agency SANA, quoting its correspondent, said Abu Humam and a number of other Nusra leaders had been killed in an army operation targeting the meeting held in the village of Hobait in a rural area of Idlib. Insurgent sources said the targeted meeting had been held in Salqin, some 100 km (60 miles) to the north of Hobait.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization that tracks the war, said there was conflicting information on where Abu Humam had been killed. SANA also cited a military source saying the army had carried out "concentrated strikes" against Nusra and other Islamist groups in the Abu al-Dhuhur area, which lies to the northeast of Hobait. Insurgent sources initially said the U.S.-led alliance had killed Abu Humam in an air strike. But a coalition spokesman said it had not conducted air strikes in the province during the past 24 hours.

Nusra Front confirmed on Friday that its top field commander was killed in an airstrike that targeted a meeting of the group's senior leadership. Abu Anas al-Shami, the spokesman for the Nusra Front, was quoted on a prominent militant website as saying that Thursday's airstrike in the western Syrian province of Idlib killed Abu Hommam al-Shami, described as the group's "military commander." The fate of the Nusra group's overall leader, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, was not clear, the Observatory said, although there were reports that he had been in the area of the attack. The jihadi website quotes the Nusra Front spokesman as saying three others were killed in Thursday's airstrike, including two of Abu Hommam's bodyguards. It did not provide further information on the identity of the third fatality.

The Nusra Front has expanded its hold over Idlib province in recent months, seizing territory from mainstream Syrian rebel groups that have received Western backing. Most recently, Nusra Front fighters overran encampments belonging to the U.S.-backed Hazm Movement rebel group and seized what it claimed were American weapons and supplies. In the aftermath of that defeat, the Hazm Movement dissolved itself. The Nusra Front is also a bitter rival of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, which controls about a third of Iraq and Syria. However, the two militant groups also occasionally cooperate on limited operations including a joint cross-border raid last year that took more than a dozen Lebanese soldiers and policemen hostage.