Doubts cast over U.S. strike on ‘Khorasan’ group

The United States is still assessing whether or not Mohsin al-Fadhli, a senior figure of the al-Qaeda-linked Khorasan group, was killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria, government officials said on Wednesday. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said earlier on Wednesday: “We believe he is dead.” But other officials said the extent of the damage caused to the Khorasan group by Tuesday’s airstrike was uncertain and they could not independently confirm the death of Fadhli or others. The Pentagon cautioned that any confirmation could take time. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he could not confirm any reports of Fadhli’s death. “The early indications are that the strikes were effective,” he told MSNBC. U.S. accounts of the Khorasan group, the attack on its base and on Fadhli himself have left open questions.

We don’t have personnel on the ground to verify, so we’re continuing to assess.

Spokesman Colonel Steve Warren

The air strikes against Khorasan followed lengthy surveillance of the group, U.S. officials said. They described it as a “network” of seasoned al-Qaeda fighters with battlefield experience mostly in Pakistan and Afghanistan, now working in league with al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front. They have used the chaos of Syria’s civil war as cover to try to devise new hard-to-detect bombs and recruit foreign militants holding Western passports to return home and eventually carry out attacks, U.S. officials said. Security agencies do not believe that Khorasan has yet managed to recruit fighters with western passports, they said.

Middle East