Region

UNITED NATIONS — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wavered between criticism and engagement in a speech to the UN on Thursday, slamming Western blunders in the Middle East but signalling commitment to securing a deal on nuclear power.

Days after the United States widened bombing raids against jihadists in Iraq to Syria, Rouhani warned that regional moderates — albeit with international support — were best placed to resolve extremism threatening the world.

"The strategic blunders of the West in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus have turned these parts of the world into a haven for terrorists and extremists," he told the UN General Assembly in New York.

"Improper interference in the developments in Syria are clear examples of this erroneous strategic approach in the Middle East."

The United States has the support of five Arab countries in its air campaign to defeat what President Barack Obama on Wednesday called a "network of death" — the Islamic State group.

Rouhani called for "moderate politicians" in the Middle East to take the lead in countering "violence and terrorism", and said it was a "myth" that Iran seeks to control Arab countries in the region.

"The right solution to this quandary comes from within the region... with international support and not from outside," he said, warning otherwise there would be "repercussions for the whole world”.

Rouhani is determined to lift damaging Western sanctions that have hit his economy hard and prevented oil companies from doing business in the oil-rich country.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is to hold three-way talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton later Thursday as they push for a nuclear deal by a November 24 deadline.

"We are determined to continue negotiations with our interlocutors in earnest and good faith, based on mutual respect and confidence," Rouhani said.

A deal would be a "historic opportunity" for the West that would send a message of "peace and security”, he added.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany are seeking to scale back Tehran's nuclear activities by November 24. Thorny talks have taken place on the sidelines of the General Assembly.

Iran wants UN and Western sanctions lifted, and is pushing for the right to enrich uranium, a process which can produce material for a bomb.

It has long denied it is seeking to develop a nuclear arsenal.

Rouhani told the United Nations that "oppressive sanctions" against Iran were a "strategic mistake" and that any delay in reaching a final agreement would only raise economic costs.

Negotiators say there are major hurdles to overcome but that meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly could facilitate high-powered diplomacy.

They have already missed an earlier July deadline to secure a deal.

Western nations agreed to lift some sanctions against Iran last year in exchange for an agreement from Tehran to curb some nuclear activities and to get to work on a comprehensive agreement.

PARIS — France launched new air strikes in Iraq Thursday and promised more support for Syrian opposition forces, as the country mourned the beheading of hostage Herve Gourdel by jihadists.

President Francois Hollande pledged "determination, composure and vigilance" in the face of threats issued by IS militants sowing terror in Iraq and Syria. He announced flags nationwide would be flown at half-mast for three days from Friday to mourn the mountaineer murdered in Algeria.

In the small, southern Alpine village of Saint-Martin-Vesubie where the 55-year-old Gourdel worked as a mountain guide, distraught locals and friends prepared to take part in a silent march for him later Thursday. They spoke of him with fondness, some with tears in their eyes.

"The village is utterly dejected," said Greg, who owns a vegetable stall just in front of Gourdel's office. A bunch of white roses lay against the door. 

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Hollande urged "national unity" during the crisis, according to government spokesman Stephane Le Foll, who also announced France had carried out air strikes in restive Iraq on Thursday morning — the second bombing raids in the space of a week.

Fighter planes destroyed four hangars near Fallujah city, west of Baghdad, that "likely" contained weapons and other equipment, a military source added.

Paris opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq but was one of the first to sign up for an active role in the US-led campaign against the IS group.

It has six Rafale fighter jets and just under 1,000 soldiers based in the United Arab Emirates. On Friday, France carried out its first air strike on IS targets in Iraq, destroying a logistics depot.

The abduction of Gourdel on Sunday in the restive east of Algeria and his subsequent execution at the hands of IS-linked Algerian group Jund Al Khilifa, or "Soldiers of the Caliphate", sparked global outrage and an outpouring of grief in France.

Earlier this week, the IS group issued a chilling threat to all members of the Iraqi campaign, urging militants to "kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French”.

In response, the French presidency announced Thursday that security in public places and on transport would be strengthened. The foreign ministry widened its vigilance alert for nationals abroad from around 30 countries earlier this week to some 40 nations — including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The Comores islands, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda were also on the new list.

While it has pledged to push forward with air strikes in Iraq, Paris has stressed it will not deploy ground troops, nor will it expand operations to Syria, as the United States has done.

US, Saudi and Emirati warplanes bombed oil installations in eastern Syria overnight in a bid to cut off a significant source of funding for the IS group.

But the presidency announced France would "continue and intensify its support for Syrian opposition forces who are fighting jihadist groups".

Back in Gourdel's hometown of Nice, flags flew at half-mast as residents came to grips with the violent end of one of their citizens.

"I was very worried. I've been crying for two days," said Patrick, a friend and neighbour.

The mayor of the French Riviera resort, Christian Estrosi, visibly moved, told reporters that the country had been plunged into "national mourning", after he met Gourdel's relatives late Wednesday.

"It's a terrible shock" for the parents, he said, adding that the family had reacted to Gourdel's death "with dignity, anger and an unspeakable pain".

In a statement, his relatives asked that gatherings planned across France in memory of the mountaineer be held "with dignity and restraint”.

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama leaves the annual United Nations meeting Wednesday with his presidency reshaped by a new era of global turbulence and his worldview sharpened by rampant jihadism's "heart of darkness”.

A year ago at the United Nations, with his authority and image as a statesman rocked by his eleventh hour decision to call off military strikes on Syria, Obama declared "the world is more stable than it was five years ago”.

Fast forward a turbulent 12 months, and that statement is remarkable as a historical marker of a world unready for a crush of breaking crises.

In his speech to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Obama offered a stark survey of a more dangerous and unpredictable globe.

"As we gather here, an outbreak of Ebola overwhelms public health systems in West Africa and threatens to move rapidly across borders," Obama told the hushed UN chamber.

"Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition.

"The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness."

Wednesday's speech was surely one Obama never contemplated a few years ago.

When he took office in 2008, his mission was to end wars that left the United States bloodied and exhausted.

Instead, he now finds himself launching a new conflict — against the Islamic State group — which the White House freely admits will stretch past his departure from office in January 2017.

Officials will have swallowed deeply at headlines which greeted Obama on Thursday, with multiple media outlets comparing the current president to George W. Bush, whose anti-terror policies he repudiated.

Many observers were struck by the echo between Obama's warning that the world must confront the jihadist "network of death" and Bush's "axis of evil" slogan grouping Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The British weekly "The Economist" cheekily superimposed a picture of Obama's head over the body of Bush in the flight suit he wore when flying to a US aircraft carrier for infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo-op after the invasion of Iraq.

Jeremy Shapiro, a Brookings Institution analyst, said Obama remains a reluctant global warrior.

"The president is not all that happy that he has ended up at this place, he would prefer not to yet again be exercising US military power in the Middle East," Shapiro said.

"At the same time, the idea that the president was ever a naive idealist is simply contradicted by the facts."

Senior US officials argue that Obama's leadership of a global coalition to take on Islamic State and fellow extremist groups had important differences with Bush's approach.

In fact, Obama's prosecution of a war against IS using the might of US air assets and empowered allies on the ground — quickly refashioned Iraqi government and Kurdish forces for instance — is consciously designed as a departure from Bush's land invasion of Iraq.

Evil does exist 

And for all the Republican criticism of Obama over a "feckless" foreign policy a clear line is evident between Wednesday's speech and his Nobel Prize acceptance lecture in Oslo in 2009.

To the surprise of many, when he showed up to collect a prize even he admitted was premature, Obama gave a speech not about how to forge peace — but a treatise on the need to sometimes wage war.

"I face the world as it is and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world," Obama said in his Nobel lecture.

Shapiro said that if Obama had ever been prone to show "naive idealism" the Nobel address would have been the place where it would have surfaced.

"But the speech [was] precisely the opposite. It says we have not eliminated war, we are not going to eliminate war and as American president I may have to exercise that."

There was also an important domestic political dimension to Obama's appearance before world leaders at the UN.

In recent weeks, the president's credibility as a global leader has been rattled by his own missteps, especially over his statement last month that he did not "yet" have a strategy to take on Islamic State.

Difficult period 

A difficult period leading up to US air strikes on IS in Iraq and Syria has, according to polls, dented confidence in his leadership on national security — that as recently as the 2012 election was seen as an asset.

A majority of Americans support US air strikes and oppose the use of ground troops in Iraq and Syria — a seam of public sentiment to which Obama is now aligned.

But previous conflicts have shown that while the president could win from a patriotic surge with American troops at war, public support could fade quickly if success is not evident against IS in the medium term.

WASHINGTON — An analysis of Twitter messages from the Arab-speaking world reveals strong anti-American sentiment, suggesting that social media posts may offer insights opinion polls cannot.

According to a research report released this week, the tweets reflect deep scepticism about the United States on issues related to the conflict in Syria and the overthrow of the Egyptian regime in 2013.

"If you want to know how people in a given society who are on Twitter are reacting to events in real time, this is a great way to find out, so long as there is no systematic censorship," said Robert Keohane, a Princeton University professor who worked on the study.

"You get quite a reliable sense of the reaction of a certain part of the public to these events and you can differentiate the types of reaction."

The paper, released by the university, was presented last month at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.

Researchers used a tool created by social media analytics firm Crimson Hexagon to examine millions of Arabic-language tweets related to events in 2012 and 2013.

They measured reaction to Washington's positions on the civil war in Syria, the polemic over the "Innocence of Muslims" video, the Boston Marathon bombing, the removal of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and Hurricane Sandy's impact on the eastern United States.

In the case of Egypt, the researchers analysed more than 2.2 million Arabic tweets that mentioned the United States and found just 3 per cent could be termed pro-American, with 23 per cent neutral and the majority critical of the United States.

"No matter which side of the domestic dispute an individual was on, he or she was likely to be opposed to the United States," the researchers wrote.

"Rather than an enemy of an enemy being a friend, the US is consistently cast as an enemy."

In a similar vein, 97 per cent of tweeters who expressed views on Syria were seen as anti-American, despite the fact that the United States opposed the Assad regime, researchers found.

By contrast, about 30 per cent of those tweeting in Arabic about Hurricane Sandy expressed concern about Americans or defended Americans.

"Reactions to cases where the US is influencing Middle Eastern affairs are 95 per cent to 99 per cent negative," Keohane said.

"Responses to American society, as in the Hurricane Sandy monitor, are much less negative."

Henry Farrell, a George Washington University political scientist who studies social media, said the research "represents a very important advance in showing how online media analysis can capture important and large-scale debate”.

The researchers say they are continuing to explore the best ways to use such Twitter data to measure public opinion, particularly in regions such as the Middle East and Africa where conducting opinion polls is especially difficult and expensive.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces are "restoring control" to one area in Anbar province, while fighting is ongoing in another area in the western region where Islamic State insurgents had surrounded two army camps over the past week, Anbar's police chief said on Thursday.

"Currently, the Iraqi forces regiments are restoring control to the Sijir area," Anbar police chief Ahmed Saddag told Reuters.

"In Albu Etha, there is no control until now. The enemy Daesh is in control of Albu Etha from the northern side," he said, using the Arabic acronym for the group that calls itself Islamic State.

On Wednesday, an Iraqi soldier told Reuters that around 200 soldiers were trapped in the Albu Etha camp with food, water and ammunition running short.

Similarly, Islamic State insurgents on Sunday overran an army base in Saqlawiya, just 50km west of Baghdad, killing or capturing 400 to 600 soldiers, a senior Iraqi security official said. Sijir is near Saqlawiya.

The government said it had detained two commanders for negligence over the Saqlawiya incident, which exposed the weakness of the army.

RIYADH — From war-ravaged Iraq and Syria to Ebola-hit Nigeria and dozens of other nations, pilgrims are converging on Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj, the world's largest Muslim gathering.

From early October, close to 2 million believers will congregate to follow the 1,400-year-old tradition of Islam's Prophet Mohammad.

"This is like a beautiful dream. I will never forget these moments," Iraqi pilgrim Kazim Ibrahim, 69, said after reaching the holy city of Mecca.

While Ibrahim and other pilgrims are united by a common religious bond, this year's Hajj comes with Muslim nations drawn together by widespread revulsion towards the Islamic State group jihadists.

Saudi Arabia and four other Arab states have joined Washington in launching air strikes in Syria against the militants, who have declared a "caliphate" straddling Iraq and Syria and committed brutal atrocities.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal has branded IS "evil" and said the jihadists have distorted the image of Islam and Muslims.

Oil rich Saudi Arabia is home to Islam's holiest sites, where it is waging a different kind of battle to protect pilgrims from two deadly viruses, Ebola and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has infected more than 6,200 people in West Africa and killed nearly half of them, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Saudi Arabia is the country hardest hit by MERS, which last weekend claimed the life of a 27-year-old Saudi man in Taif, about 80 kilometres east of Mecca.

This brought to 317 the number of MERS deaths in Saudi Arabia since it first appeared in September 2012.

Research by Saudi scientists indicates that camels play a role in the transmission of the virus to humans.

In June the WHO said a surge in MERS cases had receded but countries should remain vigilant ahead of pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia.

With such a large group of people concentrated in a limited area for a short time, "the Hajj season constitutes a factor increasing the likelihood of outbreaks or epidemics of infectious diseases", acting Health Minister Adel Fakieh said in a statement.

The ministry has created a "command and control centre" to direct its Hajj health operation.

The centre assigned eight emergency consultant doctors to stand by for treatment of newly landed pilgrims' heart attacks and other critical illnesses, said Fouad Hussain Sindi, the medical director at King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah.

In another first, the command centre ordered 15 "isolation rooms" established at the airport, Sindi said.

Fewer than 30 people, including some with severe respiratory symptoms and Nigerian pilgrims with fever, were sent to isolation as a precaution and then released, Sindi told AFP in a telephone interview.

There have been no suspected cases of Ebola or MERS among pilgrims, he said.

Saudi Arabia has not allowed pilgrims to come from three West African nations hardest-hit by Ebola — Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Every hajj visitor is given a health-screening card which must be filled in. It asks whether the traveller has been to an Ebola-infected country or had contact with an Ebola patient.

"As of now, we received around 500,000 or 600,000 cards," said Sindi, describing the pilgrims as "very cooperative, all of them".

Sindi heads a team of 640 doctors, technicians and other medical staff at the airport.

Among their tools are thermal cameras that detect high body temperatures.

Instructions not followed 

The ministry advised elderly people and those with heart, kidney and other chronic diseases not to make the pilgrimage.

"But they come... The kingdom gives them instructions but unfortunately in some countries they are not following the instructions."

The biggest challenge is posed by pilgrims who do not wash hands or take other preventative health measures as advised, Sindi said.

"We are worried" about the spread of infection, Sindi said, but as long as his team continues to follow WHO standards "we can prevent the spread of any disease" including Ebola.

Marred by stampedes, fires and other deadly incidents in the past, the Hajj has in recent years been almost incident-free thanks to multibillion-dollar safety projects by the authorities.

Saudi media said 85,000 security and civil defence officers will be on duty for the Hajj, which lasts five days.

It is among the five pillars of Islam and all capable Muslims must perform the Hajj at least once, the high point of their religious life.

After landing in Jeddah many grateful pilgrims prostrate themselves in a gesture of thanks to God, while some of the women ululate in a noisier expression of happiness that their dream has been realised.

CAIRO — Talks in Cairo between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fateh on reviving their unity government were taking place in a "positive atmosphere" on Wednesday, officials said.

The two-day talks, which began early Wednesday, come after a joint Palestinian delegation and Israel agreed to hold separate indirect talks in late October to thrash out a lasting truce in Gaza.

"There is a positive atmosphere in which the talks are being held," senior Hamas official Ezzat Al Rishq told journalists, as representatives of the two groups went into a fresh round of discussions after a mid-day break.

The talks will focus on "the return [of the unity government] in the Gaza Strip and the implementation of its authority without obstacles", said the head of Fatah's delegation, Azzam Al Ahmad.

The talks are crucial for internal Palestinian divisions to be set aside and the two rival factions to agree on a unified strategy during talks with Israeli negotiators. 

The Palestinian rivals set up a unity government of independents in June but are at loggerheads again, with President Mahmud Abbas threatening to end the administration and accusing Hamas of running a "parallel government" as de facto ruler in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas in turn accuses Abbas's Palestinian Authority, headquartered in Ramallah, of not paying its 45,000 employees in Gaza.

The unity government is also crucial ahead of an international donor conference on October 12, to be hosted by Cairo, on the reconstruction of Gaza.

Under Egyptian mediation, Israel and the Palestinians agreed on August 26 to a ceasefire that ended a 50-day war between Hamas and Israeli forces.

The war ended with an agreement to hold future talks on Palestinian demands to end an eight-year blockade of Gaza and exchange prisoners in Israeli jails for the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza.

BAGHDAD — Around 200 Iraqi soldiers were trapped in an army camp in western Iraq on Wednesday, besieged by Islamic State militants who routed hapless army forces in a raid on a base close to Baghdad at the weekend.

A soldier cornered in the camp said food, weapons and ammunition were running short, with forces sent to rescue them struggling to clear a route.

"There are troops behind us but they can't reach us because the whole area is planted with roadside bombs and landmines," said Hussein Thamir, a soldier who spoke to Reuters from inside the Albu Etha camp, about 10km south of the city of Ramadi.

"There was an army group in front of us whom [Islamic State] destroyed completely six days ago," said Thamir.

"If we withdraw, will be killed."

Using similar tactics, Islamic State insurgents on Sunday overran an army base in Saqlawiya, just 50km west of Baghdad, killing or capturing between 400 to 600 soldiers, a senior Iraqi security official said.

The heavy losses revealed once again the parlous state of the Iraqi army, which is riven by endemic corruption and low morale, and which crumpled this summer as Islamic State took control of roughly a third of the country.

The Islamic State has declared an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Both Saqlawiya and Ramadi, are in the western Anbar province where there is a major road that links the two war-battered countries.

Separately, security and medical sources said 20 militia volunteers were killed and 41 wounded in a village near Baqouba, north of Baghdad, where Islamic State militants ambushed them.

Washington has launched air strikes in Syria and Iraq to try to dislodge the radical Islamists, but has so far failed to stop the militants from carrying out high-profile attacks.

“The situation inside and outside Ramadi is very bad. They [the army] are in a defensive mode. They are not attacking. Each day [Islamic State] is carrying out an operation. We will lose Ramadi unless the American air force carries out air strikes on positions,” said an Iraqi intelligence officer in Anbar.

Hiding behind houses

Police and tribal sources said the Iraqi army, backed by special forces and pro-government fighters were fighting the insurgents in Albu Etha.

“We are launching a tough battle to isolate Islamic State fighters in a desert area near Ramadi and this time we are determined to deal them a fatal blow,” Anbar’s police chief, Major-General Ahmed Saddag, told Reuters.

Thamir said around 200 soldiers from the 2nd battalion, 40th brigade, 10th division were trapped in the camp. “We are protecting ourselves by hiding behind some houses.”

He said he could see fighting about a kilometre away, with the army trying to clear a route for them to escape. “They are not able to reach us, we can see them.”

Eyewitnesses and tribal sources said the insurgents had been transporting weapons and ammunition seized from attacks on Sijir and Saqlawiya into nearby Fallujah over the past couple of days.

Saddag said 132 soldiers were taken prisoner in Saqlawiya, but their fate was not clear. When Islamic State militants seized an army detachment at Camp Speicher in June, it gunned down hundreds of unarmed military recruits.

In a statement posted on a jihadist website, Islamic State said it had killed nearly 300 people in the assault on Sijir and Saqlawiya and gave a breakdown of the military vehicles the army had lost, including 41 Humvee vehicles.

The statement’s authenticity could not be verified.

The government says it detained two commanders for negligence over the Saqlawiya fiasco.

Former National Security adviser Mowaffaq Al Rubaie blamed the army’s performance on endemic problems like low morale, poor discipline and a lack of coordination between volunteer militia and army forces.

“There is no quick fix for this. It needs long-lasting, durable, sustainable solutions. There are structural problems,” Rubaie told Reuters.

The army needed to be reconstructed, weapons had to be delivered faster, officers had to be trained and the capacity of military and civil intelligence increased, Rubaie said.

“I’m afraid I will give you bad news, but it will get worse before it gets better, because the threat to national security is overwhelming and on Baghdad in particular.”

UNITED NATIONS — US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that too many Israelis were ready to abandon a bid for peace in the region and, in a departure from his prepared remarks, added that this was something Israelis should think about.

“The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace,” Obama told the United Nations General Assembly during a 38-minute speech addressing many of the world’s problems.

Then, departing from printed remarks made available to reporters beforehand, Obama added: “And that’s something worthy of reflection within Israel.”

“Because let’s be clear: the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable. We cannot afford to turn away from this effort — not when rockets are fired at innocent Israelis, or the lives of so many Palestinian children are taken from us in Gaza,” Obama said, speaking a week before he is due to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.

His comments followed a seven-week Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas that ended in late August with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

Israel soon afterwards announced a land appropriation in the occupied West Bank that an anti-settlement group termed the biggest in 30 years, drawing Palestinian condemnation and a rebuke from its US ally.

“So long as I am president, we will stand up for the principle that Israelis, Palestinians, the region, and the world will be more just and more safe with two states living side by side, in peace and security,” Obama said.

Asked by Reuters to respond to Obama’s remarks, Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor declined comment.

Due to meet Netanyahu on October 1, Obama said the United States would never give up on the pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace. He said violence in the Middle East should cure anyone of the illusion the Arab-Israeli conflict is the main source of the region’s problems.

Relations between Obama and Netanyahu have been strained amid tensions over failed US-led Middle East peace moves and US diplomacy with Iran, whose nuclear programme Israelis view as an existential threat.

On a visit to the Oval Office in 2011 Netanyahu famously lectured the US president on the long struggles of the Jewish people, as he sought to counter Obama’s call to base any peace agreement on borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.

BEIRUT — The US says it has hit a little-known group called "Khorasan" in Syria, but experts and activists argue it actually struck Al Qaeda's affiliate Al Nusra Front, which fights alongside Syrian rebels.

In announcing its raids in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday, Washington described the group it targeted as Khorasan, a cell of Al Qaeda veterans planning attacks against the West.

But experts and activists cast doubt on the distinction between Khorasan and Al Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda's Syrian branch.

"In Syria, no one had ever heard talk of Khorasan until the US media brought it up," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Rebels, activists and the whole world knows that these positions [hit Tuesday] were Al Nusra positions, and the fighters killed were Al Nusra fighters," added Abdel Rahman, who has tracked the Syrian conflict since it erupted in 2011.

Experts were similarly dubious about the distinction.

"The name refers to Al Qaeda fighters previously based in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran who have travelled to Syria to fight with... Al Nusra," said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre.

"They... should not be considered a new or distinct group as such."

Aron Lund, editor of the Syria in Crisis website run by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, raised similar doubts.

"The fact that news about this Al Qaeda-run, anti-Western cell linked to Al Nusra emerged just over a week ago, through US intelligence leaks — well, it's certainly an interesting coincidence," he told AFP.

"And it certainly helped make the case for attacking them, for why this mattered to US national security and for why this was not about attacking a rebel group in Syria but about attacking a group hostile to the US."

Rebels allied 

with Nusra 

Claims of a distinction are lost on many of Syria's rebels, who have also often rejected the world community's designation of Al Nusra as a "terrorist" group.

When Washington added Al Nusra to its list of "terrorist" organisations, even the internationally backed Syrian opposition National Coalition criticised the decision.

The Coalition's support for the group cooled after Al Nusra officially pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri and was named the group's official Syrian branch.

But on the ground, almost all rebel groups have been willing to cooperate with Al Nusra, seeing them as distinct from the Islamic State group (IS), which espouses transnational goals and includes many non-Syrians among its ranks.

Al Nusra, by comparison, has maintained a focus on overthrowing Syrian President Bashar Al Assad — the main goal of the rest of the Syrian opposition — and has mostly Syrian fighters.

The cooperation between moderate and Islamist rebels, and Al Nusra has even extended beyond the fight against Assad to the creation of a coalition that began fighting IS jihadists in January.

Angered by its abuses against civilians and rivals, the loose coalition succeeded in pushing the group out of much of northern Syria, though it has since regained ground, bolstered by new recruits and weapons seized across the border in Iraq.

That history of cooperation has left some rebels and activists on the ground suspicious, and even angry about the strikes on Al Qaeda.

Ibrahim Al Idlibi, an activist in Idlib province, said the opposition backed strikes against IS, but not against Al Nusra, or the so-called Khorasan.

"Some of these strikes only serve Western interests," he said.

Al Nusra "has stood with the rebels against both Daesh and the regime”, he added, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

Tensions in US coalition? 

Many are also angry that the strikes are targeting jihadists but not the Syrian regime.

In a statement, the rebel Supreme Military Command affiliated with the opposition National Coalition emphasised "the need to avoid targeting moderate national and Islamic forces".

"We demand that the attacks focus on the forces of tyranny... represented by the Assad regime and its supporters."

And targeting Al Nusra could even prove controversial within Washington's anti-jihadist alliance.

Some key members are believed to maintain channels of communication with Al Nusra, including Qatar, which has helped negotiate the release of prisoners held by the group.

On Tuesday, Washington made clear that, unlike the strikes against IS, none of its allies participated in the raids against Al Qaeda targets.

"These strikes were undertaken only by US assets," the Pentagon said.