The leader of the Ahrar ash-Sham was Hassan Aboud, and yes, it appears he was killed in this bombing.Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Though, meanwhile, it's anything but sure this was an attack by the ISIS.
The meeting was held in an underground 'bunker'. AFAIK, it might be hard to kill anybody inside an underground facility with help of a car bomb.
On the contrary, there are reports that the bomb was planted inside that bunker before the meeting.
Rumours (and there are always plenty of these in Syria, no doubt) have it that the leadership of Ahrar ash-Sham met to decide whether to officially side with the revamped FSyA, in exchange for 'US support' (or whatever of this is provided), possibly in reaction to reports that the (official) Saudi support for insurgency is slackening. But, majority of insurgents in that group - and many other of Syrian insurgents - are meanwhile so fed up of Americans, that they opposed this and would have seen this as treachery.
Overall, this version sounds at least 'logic', and if it's true, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Ahrar - or at least large parts of it - defecting from the IF and siding with the ISIS as next...
...and should that happen, it would be a major 'PR victory' for the ISIS.
Now, Ahrar is important as a relatively big, well-organized and -supplied organization of Syrian Salafists, that's sure. But, overall, it's not even 10% of the IF in total (and the IF totals something like 50% of all the insurgency).
Nevertheless, if even a chunk of the Ahrar would defect to it, the ISIS could claim it is including Syrians, and then Syrian Salafists too - which so far was simply not the case (Syrian Salafists and Wahhabists of all sorts, but especially such idiots like the ISIS are at odds with each other).
In total, this might be another tragic consequence of absurd and sadistic US policy towards Syrian insurgency...
(BTW, this is actually all Syria-related, i.e. going off topic in regards of Iraq.)
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