BEIRUT: Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate the Nusra Front mourned Thursday Lebanese "hero" Osama Mansour, who was killed during a shootout with police in Tripoli last week.
In a video tribute posted to the Twitter account of the group's Qalamoun branch, Nusra called the notorious jihadi militant a “pure-blooded martyr,” displaying pictures of him in military fatigues holding weapons and footage from his funeral.
The video included a “biography” of Mansour that detailed his “jihadi career,” starting from his experience as a Lebanese Army soldier, to fighting his opponents in Syria and Lebanon.
Mansour and his partner Ahmad al-Nather were killed in an Internal Security Forces operation in the northern city of Tripoli last Thursday.
The ISF said the operation was meant to arrest Salafist cleric Khaled Hoblos, but Mansour and Nather were nearby and instigated a shootout with officers.
The two men were shot dead while still in their vehicle.
Nusra said Mansour was the first to “actually defect” from the Lebanese army when he saw that the military was working as a “puppet” of Hezbollah.
The video, which ended with a speech by slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, followed by footage of Mansour singing Islamist chants, said the militant “started military training at a young age.”
He fought in a number of locations in Syria including al-Qusair, a village opposite Lebanon's northeastern border which was re-captured by the Syrian army and Hezbollah in June 2013.
Nusra added that Mansour had experience in rigging cars with explosives, and that he also fought in the Tripoli battles pitting the neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen.
Mansour was sentenced to death last year in absentia over an August 2014 attack in Tripoli.
He was close to Lebanon's top Islamist fugitive Shadi Mawlawi, and was wanted over plotting several attacks against the Army in Tripoli.
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