Bombing kills 45 top militants in Syria

Up to 45 high-profile members of a foreign-backed militant group have been killed in a bombing attack in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib.

Tuesday’s attack targeted a meeting of 50 members of Ahrar al-Sham in the town of Ram Hamdan, where the group’s leader, Hassan Aboud, was also killed.

The militant group confirmed that its leader was killed and many others were wounded in the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing attack, which took place in a house belonging to one of the group’s leaders.

Ahrar al-Sham, which is part of the so-called Islamic Front alliance, is believed to be receiving funding from some Arab countries of the Persian Gulf for insurgency against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The so-called Islamic Front alliance, once considered the strongest militant group in the Syrian war, is said to be engaged in fighting against the ISIL terrorist group.

The ISIL controls large swathes of Syria’s northern territory. The group sent its members into neighboring Iraq in June and seized large parts of land there in a lightening advance.

Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since 2011 with ISIL Takfiri terrorists currently controlling parts of it mostly in the east.

The Western powers and their regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — are reportedly supporting the militants operating inside Syria.

More than 191,000 people have been killed in over three years of fighting in the war-ravaged country, says the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), calling the figure a probable “underestimate of the real total number of people killed.”

NT/AS/MHB