Al-Qaeda in Iraq has flooded Syria to help fight the Assad regime, I’d be shocked if this new group known as the al-Nusrah Front who is carrying out a suicide bombing campaign against Assad isn’t packed with AQI operatives.

(AP) — Two suicide bombers blew up cars rigged with explosives near a military compound and a hotel in northwestern Syria on Monday, killing at least nine people and wounding nearly 100, state media said.

The powerful blasts, which tore two craters into the ground and ripped the facade off a multistory building, marked the latest setback for troubled United Nations efforts to end Syria’s 13-month-old crisis.

Monday’s bombs went off in the city of Idlib, an opposition stronghold that government troops

The bombers detonated their explosives near a military compound and near the city’s Carlton Hotel, SANA said.

Al-Nusrah Front claiming credit for Friday’s suicide bombing in Damascus. Via LWJ:

An al Qaeda-linked terror group in Syria known as the Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant released a statement yesterday claiming credit for the April 27 suicide attack in Damascus that killed 11 people and wounded 28 more. The Al Nusrah Front is one of two Islamist groups to have announced their existence this year in the battle against President Bashir al Assad’s regime.

The statement, titled “A Martyrdom-Seeking Operation Against a Gathering of Security Elements in the Midan Neighborhood,” was published on jihadist websites associated with al Qaeda and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.

“We in the Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant declare our responsibility for the martyrdom-seeking operation in the Midan neighborhood that took place on Friday, 27/4/2012,” the statement read, according to SITE. The terror group said the “martyrdom seeking operation was carried out by the hero Abu Omar al Shami.”

According to Al Nusrah, the targets of the attack were “the security elements [who] were gathered during the Friday prayers” and the attack was not carried out near a mosque as Syrian state television had claimed.