U.S. drone strike kills senior al-Qaida leader

WASHINGTON — A senior official of al-Qaida was killed Sunday in Syria by a U.S. drone strike, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

The leader, Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, 59, was the second-ranking official after Ayman al-Zawahri and was a son-in-law to al-Qaida’s founder, Osama bin Laden.

Jihadi social media carried reports of the attack Sunday, including photos of the vehicle purportedly struck by the drone. The strike was said to have taken place in Idlib province in northwest Syria, where the Pentagon stepped up airstrikes against top al-Qaida operatives in the last two months, killing several important figures.

Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and an expert on the war in Syria, said in an email that the death of al-Masri was the most significant blow to al-Qaida’s global network since the killing of Nasir al-Wuhayshi, al-Qaida’s No. 2 official at the time, in a drone strike in Yemen in June 2015.

Al-Masri was “jihadi royalty, meaning his death will almost certainly necessitate some form of response, whether from Syria or elsewhere in the world,” Lister said.

The killing of the al-Qaida leader was previously reported by CNN and The Guardian. It was confirmed by a U.S. official who declined to be identified because he was discussing classified intelligence reports.