DHAKA: A prominent Syrian rebel leader has died from wounds suffered in an air raid on the city of Aleppo, in a blow to the armed opposition to president Bashar Assad.

Activists said on Monday, reports The Jerusalem Post.

Abdelqader Saleh, head of the Islamist al-Tawhid Brigades, which is backed by Qatar, died in a Turkish hospital where he had been taken.

Saleh had been wounded on Thursday when Assad’s forces raided a Tawhid meeting and killed another commander on the spot, opposition sources said.

‘We declare the martyrdom of Abdelqader Saleh,’ a statement by Tawhid said.

Having lost several key rebel bases in the past few weeks, Saleh, who was in his 30s, had been working on regrouping fighters in Aleppo before he died.

The city, situated 45 kms south of Turkey, was Syria’s commercial hub and most populous city before the uprising against Assad erupted in 2011.

Taking advantage of infighting between rebel groups, Assad’s forces, backed by Shia militia from Iraq and the Lebanese party Hezbollah, have been making advances in the north and east of the contested city.

In an interview with the Opposition Orient Television from a battlefield in eastern Aleppo last week, Saleh said, ‘We will not let Iran and Hezbollah advance except on our dead bodies’.

Saleh, a merchant from the town of Mareh in the countryside north of Aleppo, organised dozens of rebel brigades in the region under the Tawhid banner.

A former army conscript, he was known by the nom de guerre Hajji Mareh.

BDST: 1407 HRS, NOV 18, 2013
RoR/BSK