The prominent Egyptian al-Qaeda leader, Omar Suroor, was killed during a series of air raids carried out by the Libyan National Army (LNA) in Derna. The air raids occurred over the weekend between LNA and a faction of the Mujahideen Shura Council.
Suroor was also known as Abu Abdullah al-Masry and was the official Mufti of the Derna Shura Mujahideen, as well as most Shiite extremist factions in Libya that follow al-Qaeda. Suroor escaped to Derna in Libya after he was listed as a wanted man by Egyptian authorities in 2014, where he became a prominent leader in al-Qaeda in the city.
Suroor, 39, was involved in a terrorist operation in Egypt as he was the right hand of Hisham Ashmawy, the Egyptian terrorist who is the founder of the group al-Mourabitoun.
Derna, 266 km (165 miles) from the border with Egypt, is the only city in eastern Libya to elude LNA control. After blockading the city from mid-2016, the LNA launched a ground offensive to capture it from a coalition of local anti-Haftar combatants known as the Derna Protection Force (DPF) last month.
