Posted on July 28, 2014

Al-Qaeda Releases Video of US Suicide Bomber in Syria

Yahoo! News, July 26, 2014

Syria’s Al-Qaeda affiliate has released a video of a young US suicide bomber from Florida who blew himself up at an army post in the northwest of the country.

Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, alias Abu Hurayra al-Amriki, was believed to be the first American national to carry out such an attack in Syria’s more than three-year-old war.

“I want to rest in the afterlife, not in this world … My heart is not at peace here. Hopefully it will be in heaven,” Abu Hurayra says in broken Arabic in the 17-minute video posted on YouTube on Friday by Al-Nusra Front.

The footage, released via Al-Nusra’s official channel Al-Manara Al-Baydaa, also shows Abu Hurayra saying: “I came to Syria without money to buy a rifle or a pouch.

“God gave me a rifle and a pouch and everything, and … (then) he gave me even more,” says the bearded man in his early 20s.

The American jihadist carried out a May 25 truck bomb attack on an army base in Jabal al-Arbaeen area of northwest Syria’s Idlib province.

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According to a Facebook page in his name, he was a fan of the Miami Heat basketball team and his favourite artists included Jay Z.

The parents of “the Florida boy” own a grocery store, with his father from Jordan and mother a convert to Islam, US newspapers reported.

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