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Al-Qaeda’s second in command killed in U.S. airstrike in Syria

The United States revealed that a Hellfire missile fired by a CIA drone killed al-Qaeda leader Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, earlier this week, while he was riding in a car near the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib. The 59-year-old al-Masri, whose real name was Abdullah Muhammed Rajab Abdulrahman, was second-in-command to the group’s leader, Ayman a-Zawahiri, and a member of its Shura council, which is the political leadership of the terror organization. Al Masri was known for his close relations with former al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin-Laden, who was assassinated in 2011, and was married to one of his daughters.