Longtime Al Qaeda leader who knew about 9/11 attacks before they happened 'killed by US air strike in Syria'
- Muhsin al-Fadhli, 34, killed while in vehicle near Sarmada, Syria
- Former leader of al Qaeda in Iran was head of secretive Khorasan group allegedly planning attacks on the West from the war-torn country
- Al-Fadhli believed to have been part of 2002 attacks on Marine in Kuwait and French oil tanker MV Limburg
Muhsin al-Fadhli, 34, was killed in an aerial attack while he was traveling near Sarmada, Syria on July 8, according to officials at the Pentagon
An al Qaeda operative thought to have had knowledge of the terrorist group's most famous attacks has been killed in a US air strike, according to US officials.
Muhsin al-Fadhli, 34, was killed in an aerial attack while he was traveling near Sarmada, Syria on July 8, Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said in a statement.
Al-Fadhli 'was a senior al Qaeda facilitator who was among the few trusted Al Qaeda leaders that received advanced notification of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,' the statement said.
Information about whether the strike was carried out by a drone or a pilot was not immediately available.
The Kuwait native was the leader of the Khorasan Group, a group of about 50 senior al Qaeda fighters running operations in Syria designed to target the West.
News of the secretive group emerged last year, though some analysts such as Mustafa Alani, Senior Advisor and Program Director in Security and Terrorism Studies at the Gulf Research Center, said that Al-Fadhli was not the groups real leader.
'He’s more a preacher then a commander,' he told Buzzfeed.
Al-Fadhi was said to have strong ties to deceased al Qaeda leaders Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
He was previously an leader for the terrorist group in Iran before his move to war-torn Syria, where the Khorasan group was said to use facilities from the Al-Nusra Front.
He was thought to be involved in the October 2002 attack on the MV Limburg oil tanker, in which tens of thousands of barrels of oil were leaked into the ocean and one crew member was killed.
The terrorist leader allegedly played a part in the death of a US Marine on a Kuwaiti island around the same time.
Al-Fadhli was said to have been part of separate 2002 attacks on a US Marine in Kuwait and the French oil tanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen
He was reportedly targeted in an air strike last year, with some officials saying he had been killed but others reserving doubts.
The US State Department had offered a $7million reward for information that brought him to justice.
American airstrikes in Syria began last September in an effort to combat Islamic State there and in neighboring Iraq.
Widespread media reports about the Khorasan Group began around the same time.
Pentagon officials said that they had killed Tariq bin Tahar-Al-Awni-al-Harzi, a senior ISIS recruiter, in a drone attack on Shaddadi, Syria, in mid-June.
The terrorist was said to be leader of the Al Qaeda Khorasan Group, which reportedly used facilities from the Al-Nusra Front in the country. Above, Al-Nusra Front fighters outside Aleppo in 2013
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