IG A photo of Al Masri with a severe head wound has been posted on social media

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Sheikh Abu Sulaiman Al Masri's death was confirmed this morning by the al-Nusra Front, the al Qaeda-affiliated Sunni Islamic terrorist group fighting against Syrian Government forces. Images of his body with a bloody gash to his head are circulating online as the group said he was killed during a battle with President Assad's forces.

It is thought he was killed in Aleppo, the capital of Syria. His death is said to be "a devastating blow" for the group's operations in Syria, where a vicious civil war has killed tens of thousands of civilians and fighters since March 2011. Al Masri, whose real name is thought to be Mahmud Maghwari, was an Egyptian who had been sentenced to death in Egypt for fighting with Hamas in Gaza before he joined al-Nusra. He only had one thumb and a few fingers after they had to be amputated due to serious damage from fighting.

IG Al Masri was pictured moment before his death

Sheikh Al Masri's death comes as Russian forces carry out air strikes alongside Syrian government troops on ISIS fighters to restore a crucial supply line to a Government-held part of Aleppo. At least 28 ISIS fighters and 21 troops and militia have been killed in the battle, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. On Friday the jihadists cut off the highway from the rest of government territory in Aleppo's west. More skirmishes to the south of the city have left at least 16 rebels dead, the Observatory said.

Al-Nusra, also called The Front for the Defence of the Syrian People, formed when the war broke out and is believed to be behind many of the suicide bombings which hit Syria at the time. The group's recruitment arm targets ordinary Muslims and is considered to be just behind Islamic State (ISIS) in the power stakes within the country. It has a reputation for honesty and discipline which it used to its advantage to gain key areas in rebel-head parts of Aleppo when the uprising started.

Getty Al-Nusra Front fighters protesting in Aleppo this week

The Syrian civil war has been made even more complex by the presence of ISIS and al-Nusra as the two terrorist groups wage war on each other as well as on President Assad's troops and anti-Government rebels. In September Ayman al-Zawahiri, who replaced Osama bin Laden as the head of al-Qaeda, declared war on ISIS' leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, saying they "don't recognise this caliphate". However, al-Zawahiri, who has a £16.3 million US bounty on his head, added: "Despite the big mistakes of ISIS, if I were in Iraq or Syria I would cooperate with them in killing the crusaders and secularists and Shia even though I don't recognise the legitimacy of their state, because the matter is bigger than that."