Syria urges United Nations to list Nusra Front a terrorist group, Syrian government officials in Damascus on Thursday urged the United Nations Security Council to add the Syria-based Islamist group Nusra Front to its list of known terrorist groups, Israeli counterterrorism expert Gerald Roemer told the Law Enforcement Examiner.
On Tuesday, Abu Baker al-Baghdadi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQII), declared his group's alliance with Nusra Front, a/k/a Jabhat al-Nusra, only hours after al-Qaeda's top leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called for a unified jihad against the Assad regime in Syria.
In return Nusra Front's commander, Abu Mohammed al- Jawalani, vowed his allegiance to al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda.
The Nusra Front has admitted it has perpetrated the majority of the terrorist bombings that caused many civilian deaths. It also boasted that it has attacked government institutions across Syria after the outbreak of the hostilities between civilians and the Syrian police and military in 2011.
When al-Qaeda in Iraq said that it had "thrown in" with the Nusra Front, the most effective force among the rebel militias fighting to topple President Assad in Syria's civil war, the Assad government claimed it as proof that it is not facing a popular movement but rather a foreign-backed terrorist plot to turn Syria into another extremist caliphate and enslave the Syrian people.
The Syrian government-controlled state news agency reported Wednesday that Nusra Front's alliance with al-Qaeda foreign fighters "proves that this [rebellion] was never anything more than a plot by the West and by [radical Islamic] terrorists to destroy the Syrian people."
But according to the Israeli counterterrorism source, talk of an alliance between the Nusra Front and al-Qaeda in Iraq has created deep concern among intelligence officials who had complained to the state news agency that cooperation between the groups had already occurred in several jointly perpetrated terrorist attacks.
The U.S. government has designated Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist network due to its afflilation with al-Qaeda, and now admitted ties between the terrorist networks are likely to cause second thoughts about providing military aid to the rebels by the U.S. and European Union.
Meanwhile, Syrian civilians are caught in the middle of cruel and deadly warfare between the government and the equally vicious rebels and the killing appears to be increasing with hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing the killing fields that were once home, according to several human rights watchdogs such as Human Rights Watch.
On Tuesday, Abu Baker al-Baghdadi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQII), declared his group's alliance with Nusra Front, a/k/a Jabhat al-Nusra, only hours after al-Qaeda's top leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called for a unified jihad against the Assad regime in Syria.
In return Nusra Front's commander, Abu Mohammed al- Jawalani, vowed his allegiance to al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda.
The Nusra Front has admitted it has perpetrated the majority of the terrorist bombings that caused many civilian deaths. It also boasted that it has attacked government institutions across Syria after the outbreak of the hostilities between civilians and the Syrian police and military in 2011.
When al-Qaeda in Iraq said that it had "thrown in" with the Nusra Front, the most effective force among the rebel militias fighting to topple President Assad in Syria's civil war, the Assad government claimed it as proof that it is not facing a popular movement but rather a foreign-backed terrorist plot to turn Syria into another extremist caliphate and enslave the Syrian people.
The Syrian government-controlled state news agency reported Wednesday that Nusra Front's alliance with al-Qaeda foreign fighters "proves that this [rebellion] was never anything more than a plot by the West and by [radical Islamic] terrorists to destroy the Syrian people."
But according to the Israeli counterterrorism source, talk of an alliance between the Nusra Front and al-Qaeda in Iraq has created deep concern among intelligence officials who had complained to the state news agency that cooperation between the groups had already occurred in several jointly perpetrated terrorist attacks.
The U.S. government has designated Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist network due to its afflilation with al-Qaeda, and now admitted ties between the terrorist networks are likely to cause second thoughts about providing military aid to the rebels by the U.S. and European Union.
Meanwhile, Syrian civilians are caught in the middle of cruel and deadly warfare between the government and the equally vicious rebels and the killing appears to be increasing with hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing the killing fields that were once home, according to several human rights watchdogs such as Human Rights Watch.
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