U.S. airstrike kills seven Al Qaeda leaders in Syria

The British-based Observatory said the strike had been targeting a dinner meeting of jihadists in the village of Jakara in the Salqin area.

The village lies in Syria’s last major rebel bastion of Idlib, which is dominated by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, led by a former al-Qaeda affiliate, and its rebel allies.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told Military.com that five non-Syrian jihadists were among those killed, but their nationalities were not immediately known.

‘They had been invited to dinner in a tent on a farm in Jakara,’ he said.

‘It was a meeting of leaders opposed to HTS and who reject the Russia-Turkish deals’ that led to a fragile truce in Idlib, he said. ‘Some were close to Hurras al-Deen.’