Al Qaeda in Iraq confirms Syrian Nusra as members

The Al-Nusra Front battling the Assad regime within the Syrian rebel movement is part of our network and fighting for an Islamic state in Syria, said Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Al Qaeda group in Iraq, in a dramatic statement Tuesday. This confirms past DEBKAfile and DEBKA Weekly disclosures of this affiliation. Our sources stress that the disclosure confirms the merger of the two al Qaeda fronts – not only as threats to Israel, Jordan and Arabia, but also by erasing the the Syrian-Iraqi border enabling a common al Qaeda attempt to overthrow the regimes in Damascus and Baghdad.