BEIRUT (AP) – Airstrikes on Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province killed at least 11 people on Monday, opposition activists said, in the latest spasm of violence to mar U.N.-brokered talks in Geneva between the government and the opposition.
Separately, there were unconfirmed reports that a top al-Qaeda official was killed in an airstrike, also in Idlib.
Also on Monday, pro-government forces drove Islamic State militants out of a line of villages in the congested Turkish frontier region, blocking the path of rival Turkish-backed opposition forces from reaching the de facto IS capital, Raqqa, activists said.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist groups, said Abdullah Muhammad Rajab Abdulrahman, the deputy to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, may have been killed in a U.S. airstrike on an unmarked sedan on Sunday evening. It cited reports circulating on Jihadist social media accounts.
The northwestern province falls largely under the control of an al-Qaida-linked rebel coalition. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by fighting are living as refugees there.