Nusra Front threatens retaliation against US-led anti-IS coalition
After US warplanes hit Nusra Front positions as well, the al-Qaeda-linked group vows attack against Western and Arab countries that took part in airstrikes, saying 'It's not a war against Nusra Front, it's a war against Islam.'
The al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front on Saturday denounced US-led air strikes on Syria, saying they amounted to a war against Islam and vowing to retaliate against Western and Arab countries that took part.
"We are in a long war. This war will not end in months nor years, this war could last for decades," the group's spokesman Abu Firas al-Suri said.
"It's not a war against Nusra Front, it's a war against Islam," he added in an audio message published on the group's social media network, its first reaction since the launch of the US-led strikes on Tuesday.
The air strikes that include some Gulf and European nations killed scores of Nusra fighters in an attack on a base in a rebel held area of northwestern Syria on the first day of the military campaign.
"These countries have done a despicable act that will put them on the list of those targeted by jihadist forces all over the world," the spokesman said.
The United States has been carrying out strikes in Iraq since August 8 and in Syria, with the help of Arab allies, since Tuesday.
The US-led coalition aims to roll back and ultimately crush the Islamic State, which has created a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border. Along the way, the militants have massacred captured Syrian and Iraqi troops, terrorized minorities in both countries and beheaded two American journalists and a British aid worker.
Most Syrian rebel factions sharply oppose the Islamic State extremist group and have lost hundreds of fighters trying to prevent it from taking over territory. The Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group of relatively moderate rebel factions, has welcomed the air campaign.
But resentment is high among the opposition that, after ignoring their pleas for greater help against Assad for years, Washington finally took action only to counter radicals it sees as a danger to US interests.
In the opening salvo of the assault, US warplanes also hit positions of the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate that is also one of the strongest rebel factions battling Assad's troops. US officials say the strikes aimed to take out an al-Qaeda cell that was a threat to the United States or Europe - but rebel factions saw an important ally being pounded by the Americans. Civilian deaths - around a dozen according to activists - have added to the anger.
In several opposition-held towns in the northern Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, protesters emerged from mosques after Friday prayers to denounce the strikes.
"The Nusra Front came to help us when the whole world abandoned us," read one banner carried in the town of Maaret al-Numan, according to videos and photos of the protests posted online by activists. "America is shelling civilians and left the killer of civilians," read a banner, referring to Assad, carried by a boy in the town of Maaret Musreen.
"I was with the strikes and now I changed my mind," said one opposition activist from the central city of Homs who is currently in neighboring Turkey. "They are attacking civilians, leaving the regime alone and attacking the Nusra Front, who were fighting against Daesh," he said, using the Arabic acronym of the Islamic State group. The activist spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
US officials deny such claims.
Joshua Baker, another State Department spokesman fluent in Arabic, told the Dubai-based pan-Arab Al-Aan TV that the US is coordinating with moderate Syrian opposition fighters known as the Free Syrian Army.
"These strikes will strengthen the moderate opposition," he said, underlining that the US does not support Assad. "We believe that Assad lost his legitimacy."
The opposition, however, counters that striking Assad's troops - or the Shiite guerrillas from Lebanon's Hezbollah group that have been instrumental in backing them - would be of greater help.
"There are lots of terrorist groups in Syria. It's not only Daesh," said Abu Omar, an activist based in the northern city of Aleppo, pointing to Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militiamen backing Assad. "Why aren't they attacking Hezbollah fighters?"
"When they bomb the Nusra Front they are doing (Assad's) regime a favor," said Abu Omar, speaking on condition he be identified by his activist nickname for security reasons. "Until now the main side benefiting from the strikes is the regime."
