From Bill Roggio: US strike in Syria “decapitated” al Qaeda’s facilitation network.

Al Qaeda leader Abu Ghadiya was killed in yesterday’s strike inside Syria, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal. But US special operations forces also inflicted a major blow to al Qaeda’s foreign fighter network based in Syria. The entire senior leadership of Ghadiya’s network was also killed in the raid, the official stated.

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The Syrian government has protested the attack, describing it as an act of “criminal and terrorist aggression” carried out by the US. The Syrian government claimed eight civilians, including women and children, were killed in the strike. But a journalist from The Associated Press who attended the funeral said that only the bodies of seven men were displayed.

The US official said there were more killed in the raid than is being reported. “There are more than public numbers [in the Syrian press] are saying, those reported killed were the Syrian locals that worked with al Qaeda,” the official told The Long War Journal. “There were non-Syrian al Qaeda operatives killed as well.”

Those killed include Ghadiya’s brother and two cousins. “They also were part of the senior leadership,” the official stated. “They’re dead. We’ve decapitated the network.” Others killed during the raid were not identified.

The strike is thought to have a major impact on al Qaeda’s operations inside Syria. Al Qaeda’s ability to control the vast group of local “Syrian coordinators” who directly help al Qaeda recruits and operatives enter Iraq has been “crippled.”

Also see Roggio’s reporting on the big Taliban fish sent to the bottom by a Predator attack in Waziristan.

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