The U.S. snuck an al Qaeda raid into its Syria anti-ISIS airstrikes
The U.S. and five Arab allies —Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — conducted 14 strikes against ISIS targets in Syria starting late Monday, U.S. Central Command said Tuesday. The attacks included 47 Tomahawk missiles fired from U.S. warships in international waters, plus bombers, fighter jets, and armed drones, Central Command said, and "all aircraft safely exited the strike areas."
But along with the U.S.-Arab mission, centered around the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, U.S. aircraft conducted eight separate strikes west of Aleppo against an al Qaeda offshoot, "sometimes referred to as the Khorasan Group," that the U.S. says has been "imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western interests." Unlike ISIS, the Khorasan Group has been planning attacks in the U.S. and other Western nations and against western airliners, U.S. intelligence says, and has set up camps to train militants with Western passports. The U.S. has a $7 million reward out for the capture of Khorasan leader Muhsin al Fadhli, a veteran al Qaeda leader and financier.
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