Muhammad Salah al-Zabir, who led an al-Qaeda-linked organization in Syria, is reported to have been killed in a US air raid in northwestern Syria on Thursday.
Just a few days earlier, al-Zabir's organization, Hurras al-Din, had announced that it would disband all activities on orders from Syria's newly appointed president, Islamist leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
According to the London-based conflict monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the decision to dissolve Hurras al-Din was made to avoid the group getting into an "armed conflict" with the now ruling Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
HTS has had its stronghold in northwestern Syria, where more or less extreme Islamist groups have ruled with support from primarily Turkey. HTS had formal ties to the terrorist organization al-Qaeda until 2016, when these were severed. Less than two years later, Hurras al-Din was founded as a new sub-organization to al-Qaeda.
Both HTS and Hurras al-Din are designated as terrorist organizations by the US, but since HTS took power in Syria in December, some sanctions against the group have been lifted.
Corrected: In an earlier version, the wrong date was stated for when the attack took place.
