In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Mabrouk was targeted in the airstrike by U.S. forces, but did not confirm his death, saying that the results of the strike are still being assessed. "Each time we remove a significant Al-Qaeda leader, we disrupt and degrade their command and control and halt their expansion," he said. A Twitter account run by the Fatah al-Sham Front said that Mabrouk, a veteran Egyptian jihadist also known as Abu Farag al-Masri, was killed in the northern Idlib province, which is controlled by an insurgent alliance that includes the Fatah al-Sham Front. US 'protecting Syria jihadist group'

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, reported on Monday that Masri was killed when the vehicle he was travelling in was hit near the border with Turkey. Last month, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham's top military commander was killed in an air strike in the northern province of Aleppo. Mabrouk was imprisoned in his native Egypt in 1981 in the sweep following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Fatah al-Sham recently announced it was changing its name and severing ties with al-Qaida in a video in which Mabrouk sat next to the group's top leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani. But in part because of the presence of al-Qaida veterans like Mabrouk among its ranks, most experts still view the group as an al-Qaida affiliate, and both the United States and Russia have vowed to keep striking it.
A United States Air Force drone strike kills a senior leader in the Syrian militant group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Egyptian-born Abu al-Faraj al-Masri, in Jisr al-Shughur, Idlib Governorate.