Free Republic

While the Islamic State group is getting the most attention now, another band of extremists in Syria — a mix of hardened jihadis from Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Europe — poses a more direct and imminent threat to the United States, working with Yemeni bomb-makers to target U.S. aviation, American officials say. At the center is a cell known as the Khorasan group, a cadre of veteran al-Qaida fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to link up with the al-Qaida affiliate there, the Nusra Front.

The leader of an al Qaeda-linked group allegedly bent on attacking the West has been killed in an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, U.S. officials said Sunday. Sanafi al-Nasr, a Saudi citizen whose real name is Abdul Mohsen Adballah Ibrahim al Charekh, was the highest-ranking member of the Khorasan Group -- a collection of veteran al Qaeda jihadis which had moved into Syria, the Pentagon said in a statement. He was killed in an airstrike in northwest Syria on Thursday, the statement said. Nasr, who was once al Qaeda's chief financial officer and had been designated a Specially...

Britons fighting for militant groups in Syria are being targeted to smuggle explosives on to Western airliners and become suicide bombers as Al Qaeda plan a spectacular attack over a major city, intelligence officials warn. The Pakistan-based, Iranian-backed Khorasan group linked to Al Qaeda is said to have sent members to 'embed' with affiliated terror groups to identify British, European and United States passport holders who could slip through security and carry a bomb on to a plane.

Khorasan is al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda is Khorasan. To date, nothing has been established to suggest a distinguishing difference in ideology between the two separately named entities. Instead, experts suggest that Khorasan should be viewed as an elite unit, largely consisting of members from al-Qaeda's "core" group, who are predominantly focused on plotting attacks against the West.

Shortly before the United States and its Arab allies launched air strikes on Islamic State (IS) positions across Syria on Tuesday, cruise missiles launched from US warships in the Gulf and Red Sea struck two areas west of the city of Aleppo. The targets were not leaders of IS, the jihadist group that has declared the creation of a caliphate in the large swathes of Syria and Iraq under its control, but seasoned al-Qaeda operatives who the US says had established a safe haven to plot attacks on the West. The missiles targeted training camps, a bomb factory, a communication...

(CNN) -- [Breaking news update 6:44 a.m. ET] The Khorasan Group, which the U.S. military struck overnight in Syria, was actively plotting against a U.S. homeland target and Western targets, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday. The threat was "imminent," the source said. The U.S. military also struck ISIS targets in Syria. The United States "had very good information" about the threat from the Khorasan Group, the source said. The U.S. strikes against the group were planned in advance, not at the last minute, the official said. Khorasan operatives were coming closer to the "end of their planning," the official...