The barrage of US cruise missiles last month aimed at an al-Qaida cell in northern Syria killed just one or two key militants, according to American intelligence officials who say the group of veteran fighters is still believed to be plotting attacks against US and European targets.
The strikes on a compound near Aleppo did not deal a crippling blow to the Khorasan Group, officials said, partly because many important members had scattered amid news reports highlighting their activities. Among those who survived is a French-born jihadi who fought in Afghanistan with a military prowess that is of great concern to US intelligence officials now.
"The strikes were certainly effective in setting back the Khorasan Group, but no one thinks they were a permanent solution or a death blow to the threats that come from this cell," said Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat and a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
On September 22, the US fired 46 cruise missiles at eight locations to target the group. At the same time, American airstrikes struck targets associated with the Islamic State group in Syria.
One of the US missiles went awry and killed a dozen civilians in the village of Kfar Derian, according to witnesses, who said the dead included Mohammed Abu Omar, an activist in the northern province of Idlib. The US military says it has not confirmed any civilian casualties.
The limited effectiveness of the attack on the Khorasan Group is partly the result of a hazy intelligence picture that also has bedeviled the air campaign against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq.
The US lacks the networks of bases, spies and ground-based technology it had in place during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials say, or even the network of human sources it developed in Pakistan and Yemen. The existence of the Khorasan Group became public only weeks before the airstrikes, but US officials had been tracking it for up to two years. Officials said the group has a few dozen al-Qaida members, some of whom are long-sought militants of the fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are working closely with Syria's al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, officials said.
The several current and former US officials spoke on condition of anonymity about the group because they were not authorized to discuss classified information.
