Terrorist Mihraç Ural reported killed in Syria

Terrorist Mihraç Ural, an ethnic Arab living in Syria, known for his close ties to the Assad regime and indicated to be responsible for the car bombing in the Turkish border town of Reyhanlı which killed 46 people, is reported to have been killed in a rural area of Latakia in northern Syria.

The opposition group Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyah (Islamic Movement of the Free Men of the Levant) announced his death.

The spokesman of Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyah, Abu Yusuf al-Muhacir, said his forces hit a regime convoy, which included Mihraç Ural and a number of Russian officers, with cannons. Other local sources said Ural was killed during the operation in Palmyra.

According to reports, walkie-talkie conversations of regime forces in Hama, Idlib and Latakia also confirmed the death of Ural.

Also, pro-Assad MP Ahmet Şilaşi offered his condolences for the death of Ural, saying his allies will take revenge for the killing.

Syria has become a terrorist safe-haven for Marxist-Leninist terrorist organizations, broken up by the police raids in the past years, to burgeon by taking advantage of the country's long-running civil war, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives, according to reports.

According to local sources, the Syrian Resistance, a former Marxist terrorist group based in Turkey and led by Mihraç Ural, was the most active terrorist organization in the remote area of Latakia, a stronghold of the Shiite-linked sects in the Sunni-majority Syria.

Mihraç Ural, known by the pseudonym “Ali Keyyal" while running the Turkey People's Liberation Party-Front, or THKP-C, also ran the Syrian group al-Shabbiha.

Ural was known to be very close to al-Assad's intelligence service, and highly active in Latakia and the capital, Damascus. Ural allegedly had nearly 2,000 fighters battling in Syria. The groups, trained in DHKP-C terror bases in Latakia, have been involved in armed attacks alongside terrorists led by Ural.

After the deadly attack in Hatay, reports said Ural was seeking recruits in Hatay to work for the Syrian intelligence organization, Muhaberat.

Mihraç Ural had close ties with Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the terrorist organization Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) when Öcalan was in Syria.

Ural was also known to be a key name in drug trafficking on the Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Greece line.

Ural's wife, Melek Fadal, is known to be related to the Assad family.