MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The al-Nusra Front presently controls a large portion of the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib.
"According to reports by local residents, more than a hundred Nusra Front terrorists have arrived to the village of Kafr Hamrah [in the northwestern suburbs of Aleppo]," the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on its website.
Al-Nusra Front Terrorists in Aleppo Suburbs Receive Poison Gas Ammunition
Trucks carrying ammunition with chlorine-based toxic agents have arrived in Aleppo outskirts controlled by al-Nusra Front terrorists, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
"Several trucks carrying self-made ammunition, armed with chlorine-based toxic agents, have arrived from the Idlib province to the northern outskirts of the city of Aleppo controlled by al-Nusra Front terrorists," the ministry said in a daily bulletin posted on its website.
Starting from 2013, al-Nusra Front has sent significant numbers of its fighters and top terrorist leaders from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Syria. Among them were Abu al-Khayr al-Masri and Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, two of the terrorists suspected of perpetrating the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Al-Masri previously served as the former assistant to Zawahiri, and is married to one of Osama bin Laden's daughters. A third senior figure who has come to Syria was Khaled al-Arouri, believed to be related by blood or by marriage to Islamic State founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Given the Syrian army's successful series of advances against both Daesh and al-Nusra Front terrorists in recent weeks, supported by Russian air power, it's unclear how long any possible copy-cat Syrian 'caliphate' would actually be able to last.
