Major Syrian rebel group names new leader

Beirut, Sep 10 (IANS/EFE) The Syrian Islamic rebel group Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of the Levant) named a new leader Wednesday after the death of its previous chief, Hassan Aboud, during an attack in northern Syria.

A spokesman for the advisory board of the group said in an online video that Hesham al-Sheikh has been named "Emir" and commander of the organisation.

The Islamist faction has also appointed a new military leader, Abu Saleh al-Taham.

Al-Sheikh, who is an engineer by profession, was one of the group's commanders in the city of Aleppo.

Aboud and 17 other members of the organisation were killed Tuesday in an attack on the barracks of the group in the northern Syrian province of Idlib.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack that occurred in the Ram Hamdan area.

The spokesman, reading from a statement, said that those "heroes" of his faction have joined the rest of the "martyrs" in Syria.

He also added that the deaths would not stop the group from continuing to fight against the Syrian regime, as well as against the Islamic State (IS) Sunni extremist organisation.

The Ahrar al-Sham, that follows a fundamentalist Salafi ideology, is one of the main factions of the Islamic Front, the largest opposition Islamist alliance in Syria.

The rebel group has been fighting since the beginning of the year against the IS which proclaimed a caliphate in the territories under its control in Iraq and Syria.

Abu Khaled al-Suri, another leader of the movement, was killed in February during a suicide attack in Aleppo province.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Wednesday the death of the military leader of the al-Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda-affiliated cell in Syria, during clashes Tuesday with the government forces in the central province of Hama.

--IANS/EFE

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