Syria’s Ahrar al-Sham rebels name new leaders after blast

An ultraconservative Syrian rebel group says it has named new leaders, a day after an explosion killed nearly a dozen of its top members.

A spokesman for Ahrar al-Sham said Wednesday in a video statement posted online that Hashem al-Sheik Abu Jaber would assumed overall leadership of the group, while Abu Saleh Tahan would fill the role of military chief.

The two take charge of a once-powerful group decimated by the deaths of nearly all its leading members, including longtime chief Hassan Aboud, in an explosion that struck a high-level meeting late Tuesday in northwestern Syria .

It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast, and there even were conflicting reports on the nature of the explosion. Ahrar al-Sham said the men were killed in a car bombing.

Associated Press