Death Of Rebel Leader Seen As Key Loss To Syria’s Anti-Assad Forces
BEIRUT -- A rebel commander who built the most effective faction in northern Syria of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army has died of wounds he suffered last week in an airstrike on a meeting of high-level rebel and opposition figures, his unit announced Monday.
Abdul-Qadir Saleh had been taken to Turkey for treatment of the injuries he’d suffered Thursday when forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad targeted the building where he was meeting with other key rebel leaders outside the contested city of Aleppo. His unit, the Liwa Tahid brigade, initially reported that his injuries weren’t serious, but he died shortly after arriving at a medical facility in Gaziantep, Turkey. His body was returned to his hometown in Syria for burial over the weekend, the group said Monday.
Three other high-ranking commanders were killed and the group’s political director was wounded, the group said.
Saleh’s death was seen as a massive setback for the future of moderate Islamist rebel factions, which have suffered a series of defeats recently at the hands of the Assad government and al Qaida-affiliated rebel groups with which they’ve clashed. Widely seen as the U.S.-backed rebellion’s most effective military leader, Saleh had a reputation not only for driving his group’s battlefield prowess but also for being able to work effectively with the broad range of anti-Assad groups, from Western donors to al Qaida-inspired militants.
“The martyr leader Abdul-Qadir Saleh was one of the bravest men of the Syrian revolution,” said Salar al Kurdi, a rebel activist from Idlib. “He had an excellent reputation and he was well mannered. It is a loss to us because we lost a gentleman and an honest fighter, someone from whom we never heard any lies or betrayal.”
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