Such US drone strikes have been relatively common in Syria’s Islamist opposition-held northwest in recent years, but Monday’s targeted killing followed a lull over recent months. Agence France-Presse cited the head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying the strike killed two jihadi officials, one of Tunisian and the other of either Yemeni or Saudi origin. …. Previous US strikes have targeted officials with the Syrian jihadi group Huras al-Din, a more extreme offshoot of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). HTS grew out of the country’s local al-Qaeda branch, Jabhat al-Nusra, which emerged amid the peak of Syria’s frenetic civil war.
