Airstrike hits al-Qaida faction, U.S. says

BEIRUT – An overnight U.S. aerial assault in northern Syria struck al-Qaida-linked extremists who were plotting to attack the West, the U.S. military said Thursday.

Targeted was an al-Qaida faction that U.S. authorities call the Khorasan Group, composed of “extremists who share a history of training operatives, facilitating fighters and money, and planning attacks against U.S. and Western targets,” the U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

Published reports indicated that among those who may have been killed is a French militant known as a skilled bomb maker. Many jihadists from Europe and elsewhere have traveled to Syria and joined with various armed groups operating amid the chaos of the more than three-year civil war.

The United States has launched scores of airstrikes in Syria since September, with the vast majority targeting the Islamic State, an al-Qaida breakaway faction that has overrun vast stretches of Syria and neighboring Iraq. President Barack Obama has vowed that U.S. forces would “degrade and ultimately destroy” the organization.

But the overnight strikes reported Thursday were the first since September directed at the Khorasan Group, which remains a shadowy organization – despite the considerable attention it has garnered from the U.S. intelligence and defense establishments. The group is composed of veteran al-Qaida operatives, U.S. officials say.

Los Angeles Times