Defeating ISIS one building at a time.
Via McClatchy DC
The U.S. Air Force confirmed Monday that its aircraft had bombed and destroyed a complex of buildings belonging to al Qaida’s Nusra Front affiliate, bringing to at least three the number of American airstrikes that have targets the terrorist group since bombing in Syria began last year.
The attack came one week after Nusra had defeated an American-backed Syrian rebel group and forced it to disband, capturing an unknown number of U.S.-supplied sophisticated anti-tank missiles.
Local and humanitarian sources said Sunday’s strike killed at least five Nusra militants. A 15-year-old boy, who apparently was working at the site, possibly tending livestock, also was killed, a resident of the nearby Atma camp for displaced Syrians told medical personnel in Turkey.
The U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in Syria and Iraq, said U.S. fighters and bombers destroyed four terrorist compounds and three tents at what it described as a staging area for the Khorasan group, a designation the United States has given to a Nusra unit that it says is “plotting external attacks against the United States and our allies.”
Centcom described the complex as 26 miles west of Aleppo. But local residents said the buildings were located in the town of Bab al Hawa across from the Turkish border town of Reyhanli and in fact housed the local headquarters for Nusra, which has seized most of the northern province of Idlib from moderate Syrian rebels in the past three months. Bab al Hawa once was the headquarters for the U.S.-backed Supreme Military Command of moderate rebels.[…]
The attack came exactly seven days after the U.S.-backed Harakat Hazm movement announced it was disbanding after coming under fierce attack from Nusra. Hazm had been receiving arms, training and funding under a covert U.S. program, which has now all but dried up for northern Syria.
Nusra captured a key Hazm base in Aleppo, known as Base 46, as well as a stock of weapons thought to include U.S.-supplied TOW anti-tank missiles.
The Central Command statement made no reference to Nusra’s triumph of a week ago or to the missing weapons, and it wasn’t clear from reports from the scene whether the complex of buildings housed a major weapons depot.