BEIRUT: Air strikes on Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province killed at least 11 people on Monday, opposition activists said, in the latest spasm of violence to mar UN-brokered talks in Geneva between the government and the opposition.

Separately, there were unconfirmed reports that a top Al Qaeda official was killed in an air strike, also in Idlib.

Also on Monday, pro-government forces drove militants out of a line of villages in the congested Turkish frontier region, blocking the path of rival Turkish-backed opposition forces from reaching the de facto IS capital, Raqqa, opposition activists said.

The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist groups, said Abdullah Muhammad Rajab Abdulrahman, the deputy to Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, may have been killed in a US air strike on an unmarked sedan on Sunday evening.

It cited reports circulating on Jihadist social media accounts.

The northwestern province falls largely under the control of an Al Qaeda-linked rebel coalition. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by fighting are living as refugees there. Images of the vehicle purported to have been carrying Abdulrahman, known more widely by his nom de guerre Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, showed damage to the passenger compartment of the beige Kia sedan but no damage to the engine block. The roof was blown open on the right side of the vehicle.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that a top Al Qaeda official was killed in a drone strike, but could not confirm it was al-Masri.

Al-Masri was a close affiliate to late Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden and was once the chairman of the organisation’s management council, according to a Washington Post report citing leaked US intelligence documents dating back to 2008. Iranian authorities are believed to have jailed him following the 9/11 attacks before releasing him in a prison exchange with Al Qaeda in Yemen in 2015.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2017