Top Syrian rebel leader reported killed in airstrike

Reporting from Amman —  A top-level Syrian rebel commander was killed in an airstrike near the capital, Damascus, on Friday, government officials and rebels said, along with more than 20 of his Islamist comrades.

Syrian security forces took credit for launching an air attack on a meeting in the eastern Ghouta region, northeast of Damascus, of opposition commanders from groups including Zahran Alloush’s Islam Army (Jaysh al Islam), Ahrar al Sham and Falyaq al Rahman.

Alloush along with his brother was reported among those killed.

The Islam Army, regarded as the among the most powerful rebel groups in the Damascus area, is part of the Islamic Front alliance with links to Al Qaeda.

Abu Azzam Ansari, the nom de guerre of a prominent Ahrar al Sham commander, confirmed Alloush’s death on Twitter on Friday, saying he had gotten “martyrdom in the name of God.”

A Lebanese broadcaster close to the Syrian government aired video said to be from the strike, which it claimed was on a farm where the rebel leaders were meeting to “organize operations” against pro-government forces.

Alloush, a one-time building contractor and son of an influential Salafist preacher now living in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in 2009 on charges of weapons possession and placed in prison.

But in 2011, three months after anti-government protests began against Syrian President Bashar Assad, he was released as part of a general amnesty, and soon took up arms.

He formed the Islam Battalion, a rebel faction that, due to deft political maneuverings and his strong links to Saudi Arabia, emerged as the nucleus of the Islam Army, a conglomerate of 55 rebel factions based in the Ghouta, according to the group’s charter.

Jaysh al Islam regularly launched rocket barrages into Damascus. The government, meanwhile, has mounted a punishing siege on Ghouta since 2013 and has conducted dozens of airstrikes against its population.

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Homs’ Old City. Gutted apartment blocks in Homs once housed its long-prospering merchant class.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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People line up at a government checkpoint to enter the rebel-held neighborhood of Waer. Before the war, Sunnis, Shiites and Christians coexisted peacefully in Homs.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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Mohammed Ali Nouh, in background, is one of the few shop owners who have reopened for business in Old Homs, where residents use bicylces because public transportation is nonexistent.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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Workers rebuild a shop near the city’s old souk. The souk’s specialty areas — including the gold market, the metalwork and woodcraft bazaars, the section featuring ladies’ goods — remain deserted.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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Shoppers head to a government-run bakery the size of an airplane hangar that sits along the tense border between rebel-controlled Waer and government-held territory. “Here we feed everyone; they are all our citizens,” says the bakery manager, Hussein Amin, 59.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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The bakery’s sizzling gas ovens churn out tens of thousands of circular flatbreads daily for consumption on both sides of the divide.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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Posters in the pro-government Zahra district commemorate martyrs, including those killed in the civil war.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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A 13-year-old girl does her homework in a school turned shelter for displaced families. Her family escaped from Waer and now lives in the shelter in the Baba Amr district.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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The dense warren of Old Homs was once a vibrant and religiously diverse home to more than 300,000 people; fewer than 30,000 remain, according to official estimates.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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A rusted tank in Old Homs.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

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A poster of President Bashar Assad in Old Homs.

  (Liliana Nieto del Rio / For The Times)

Alloush also became an important figure in rebel circles beyond the Ghouta, and was at one time seen as a potentially unifying force for the opposition.

However, his sectarian rhetoric against Syria’s Alawite and Shiite minorities, and calls for an Islamic system of governance and shunning of democracy aroused concern among Western observers.

He was also accused of the “disappearing” of Syrian civil rights activist and human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouneh, who was taken, along with her husband and two other colleagues, from her office in the Islam Army-controlled area of Douma in December of 2013.

Bulos is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Patrick McDonnell also contributed to this report.

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