Syria, Feb 9, 2017: The US military has reportedly said that it has killed eleven Al-Qaeda operatives, including a veteran leader and suicide bombing pioneer, in a bombing raid in Syria.

Abu Hani al-Masri, the Qaeda veteran, was one of those who were killed in the precision airstrikes near Idlib carried out on February 3-4. Al-Masri was an early official in al-Qaeda, overseeing the group's training camps in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s as he worked with Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

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He helped find Egyptian Islamic Jihad-the first Sunni group to use suicide bombers in their terror attacks and he also recruited, indoctrinated, trained and equipped thousands of terrorists who subsequently spread throughout the region and the world.

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"These strikes disrupt al-Qaeda's ability to plot and direct external attacks targeting the US and our interests worldwide," said Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis. The US has mostly focused its attacks in Syria on the Islamic State group. But in recent months, US forces have launched many attacks against its al-Qaeda rivals.

– prepared by Shambhavi Sinha of NewsGram. Twitter: @shambhavispeaks