The activists said a big force from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, raided the house of Jamal Zeina, better known as Abu Malek al-Tali, on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Idlib and detained him.

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Al-Tali was behind major operations for the group that used to be known as Nusra Front, including the December 2013 kidnapping of 12 Orthodox nuns from Maaloula, a Christian village in Syria that insurgents controlled for a few months during the country's nine-year conflict. Nusra Front exchanged the nuns four months later with women held in Syrian government prisons.

In 2014, militants under al-Tali's command briefly stormed the Lebanese border town of Arsal and captured more than two dozen Lebanese soldiers and policemen. Nusra Front exchanged the troops it was holding with prisoners held in Lebanon.

Al-Tali, a Syrian citizen, is known to be a hard-liner who is opposed to a truce reached in March between Russia and Turkey that stopped a Syrian government offensive on Idlib province, the last remaining rebel stronghold in the country. The three-month offensive under the cover of Russian airstrikes killed hundreds and sent a million people fleeing toward the Turkish border.

Al-Tali defected in April and set up his own group that became close to al-Qaida-linked Horas al-Din group, Arabic for "Guardians of Religion." Horas al-Din are hardcore al-Qaida elements who broke away from HTS.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said al-Tali defected from HTS in April, adding that he had personally acquired large sums of money from the deal to release the nuns.

The Shaam Newtork, an activist collective, said al-Tali and other former HTS commanders have been opposed to recent policies adopted by the group's top commander, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who has been taking cautious steps since Turkey sent thousands of soldiers into Idlib earlier this year.

Al-Tali's son, Orwa, was shot dead in 2017 in an apparent internal feud between militants in northwest Syria.

Elsewhere in Syria on Monday, a senior Kurdish official said 10 French children of detained or deceased Islamic State fighters were handed over to a delegation representing the French Foreign Ministry. Abdulkarim Omar tweeted that the handover took place in the Qamishli region on Sunday.

Thousands of ISIS members and their families are in camps and detention centers in northern Syria, including more than 60,000 mostly women and children held at al-Hol camp in Hasakeh province. Although most of the women and children are from Iraq or Syria, there are about 8,000 from third countries.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet expressed concern Monday over the plight of thousands of so-called "third-country nationals" stranded in Syria.

She called for urgent action to be taken by their home countries in view of serious limitations on access to humanitarian aid, as well as risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic.

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"I very much welcome that some countries of origin have started repatriating their nationals – and are showing more openness to repatriating young children and orphans," Bachelet said. "But the fact remains that thousands of people, mostly women and children, are unable to return to their own countries of nationality or origin."

She said states should assume responsibility for all of their nationals, in accordance with their obligations under international law.

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Backed by Russian airpower, Syrian government forces had made a significant advance into the rebel-held northwest this week, seizing the town of Maarat al-Numan, part of an offensive to secure the main highway between Damascus and Aleppo.

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The suicide attacks were carried out by jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and targeted the Jamiyat al Zahraa area on the western edge of Aleppo. A third car bomb was set off by remote control, a source with the group said.

A news outlet linked to the group, Ebaa, published a video which it said showed Tahrir al-Sham fighters pledging "allegiance to death and jihad" before the attack on Jamiyat al-Zahraa, watched by the group's leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

The northwestern corner of Syria including Idlib province and adjoining areas of Aleppo is the last major rebel foothold in Syria, where Assad has taken back most of the ground once held by his enemies with Russian and Iranian support.

Syrian state news agency SANA said army troops had destroyed four car bombs before they reached their targets. Syrian army forces were firing rockets and artillery at militant groups on the Jamiyat al-Zahraa front, it said. Militants had also fired rockets at residential districts of Aleppo.

The two sides gave conflicting accounts of the outcome of the attack.

A news outlet run by Lebanon's Hezbollah, which fights in support of Assad, said the Syrian army had thwarted a "fierce attack" by the Nusra Front, as Jolani's group was known until it broke ties with al-Qaida in 2016.

But the jihadist-linked Ebaa news outlet said the attacking forces had captured a group of houses on a hill overlooking Aleppo.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham source said the attacks had targeted the "Iranian occupation militias," a reference to Iran-backed groups fighting in support of Assad.

Aleppo city has been under full government control since 2016, when pro-Damascus forces defeated rebels in the east of the city.

Some 50 km (35 miles) northeast of Aleppo, Turkish-backed rebels attacked government-held positions near the city of al-Bab, a rebel source and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Turkish forces were not taking part, rebels said.

The government's latest offensive has triggered a fresh wave of civilian displacement, with hundreds of thousands moving towards the Turkish border.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey may launch a military operation in Idlib unless the fighting there is halted.

The US special envoy for Syria said on Thursday the Idlib fighting raised the spectre of an international crisis.

Turkey, which already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, fears a fresh wave of migrants. It has 12 military observation posts around Idlib, set up under an agreement with Russia and Iran, and several of them have since been surrounded by advancing government forces.

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Baghdadi would sometimes hold strategy talks with his commanders in moving minibuses packed with vegetables in order to avoid detection, Ismael al-Ethawi told officials after he was arrested by Turkish authorities and handed to the Iraqis.

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"Ethawi gave valuable information which helped the Iraqi multi-security agencies team complete the missing pieces of the puzzle of Baghdadi's movements and places he used to hide," one of the Iraqi security officials said.

"Ethawi gave us details on five men, including himself, whom were meeting Baghdadi inside Syria and the different locations they used," the official told Reuters.

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Baghdadi died "whimpering and crying" in a raid by US special forces in the Idlib region of northwest Syria.

In a televised address from the White House, Trump said the Islamic State leader died alongside three of his children when he detonated an explosives-laden vest after fleeing into a dead-end tunnel during the attack.

The path to Baghdadi's demise was full of frustrations for Western and Arab intelligence agencies, which pored over clues to the whereabouts of a man who imposed a reign of terror across a large swathe of Syria and Iraq, ordering his men to carry out mass executions and beheadings.

He is also responsible for gruesome attacks across five continents in the name of his ultra-fanatic version of Islam.

Turning terrorists such as Ethawi was critical to the agents trying to track Baghdadi.

Ethawi, who holds a PHD in Islamic Sciences, was considered by Iraqi intelligence officials to be one of the leader's top five aides. He joined al-Qaida in 2006 and was arrested by US forces in 2008 and jailed for four years, according to the Iraqi security officials.

Baghdadi later tasked Ethawi with key roles such as delivering religious instructions and the selection of Islamic State commanders. After the group largely collapsed in 2017, Ethawi fled to Syria with his Syrian wife.

Another turning point came earlier this year during a joint operation in which US, Turkish and Iraqi intelligence agents captured senior Islamic State leaders, including four Iraqis and one Syrian, the Iraqi security officials said.

"They gave us all the locations where they were meeting with Baghdadi inside Syria and we decided to coordinate with the CIA to deploy more sources inside these areas," said one of the Iraqi officials, who has close ties to multiple security agencies.

"In mid-2019 we managed to locate Idlib as the place where Baghdadi was moving from village to village with his family and three close aides," the official said.

Informants in Syria then spotted an Iraqi man wearing a checkered headdress in an Idlib marketplace and recognized him from a photograph, the official said. It was Ethawi, and they followed him to the home where Baghdadi was staying.

"We passed the details to the CIA and they used a satellite and drones to watch the location for the past five months," the official said.

Two days ago, Baghdadi left the location with his family for the first time, traveling by minibus to a nearby village.

"There it was his last moment to live," the official said.

Baghdadi was also on the run from local enemies in Syria.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group formerly known as the Nusra Front and which dominates Idlib, had been mounting its own search for Baghdadi after receiving information he was in the area, according to a commander in an Idlib jihadist group.

The Nusra Front and Islamic State were rivals who fought bloody battles against each other in the Syrian war.

The Nusra Front, founded by Abu Mohamad al-Golani, was al-Qaida's official affiliate in Syria until it broke away from the global jihadist network in 2016.

According to the Idlib commander, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham recently captured another aide to Baghdadi, Abu Suleiman al-Khalidi, one of three men seen sitting alongside Baghdadi in his last video message.

The capture of Khalidi was "the key" in the search for Baghdadi, the commander said.

His comments raised the possibility that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which locals say is believed to have contacts with Turkish forces in northwest Syria, may have passed on what it learned to other intelligence agencies.

Baghdadi may have concluded that hiding in Idlib was his best hope after Islamic State was all but wiped out in Iraq and Syria. He could have blended in, while lax security and checkpoints operated by armed groups that rarely search vehicles increased his chances of survival, the commander said.

He said Baghdadi was believed to have been in Idlib for about six months, and that his main reason for being there was to try to hide. But he said Baghdadi was still seen as a major threat because his presence would have attracted supporters in an area where Islamic State has sleeper cells.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters raided the town of Sarmin about two months ago after receiving information about Baghdadi being there, but he was not found, according to the commander.

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With a $25 million US bounty on his head, al-Baghdadi steered his chillingly violent and surprisingly disciplined followers into new territory by capitalizing on feelings of Sunni supremacy and disenfranchisement at a time of tumult that followed the Arab Spring.

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One of the few senior ISIS commanders still at large after two years of steady battlefield losses, al-Baghdadi died Saturday when he detonated his suicide vest in a tunnel while being pursued by US forces north of Idlib, Syria, killing himself and three of his children, US President Donald Trump announced Sunday. He was believed to be 48.

"He didn't die a hero, he died a coward, crying, whimpering, and screaming," Trump said at the White House, adding that the US had al-Baghdadi under surveillance for weeks.

Fighters under his command were some of the first jihadis to grow up with the internet, and they deftly exploited social media to tout their military successes, document their mass slaughter, beheadings and stonings, and promote the Islamic State to a global audience.

The announcement of his death came nearly two years after Iraq announced the defeat of ISIS and five years after the group humiliated its armed forces and seized nearly a third of the country.

In April, US-backed Kurdish-led forces in Syria declared the group's territorial defeat after liberating the village of Baghouz in eastern Syria, its last bastion. The Islamic State saw its territory shrink from an area the size of Britain to a speck in the Euphrates river valley.

Though at minimum a symbolic victory for Western counterterrorism efforts, it is unclear what impact his death will have on possible future attacks. He was largely regarded as a figurehead of the global terror network, and was described as "irrelevant for a long time" by a coalition spokesman in 2017.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the death of al-Baghdadi is "only a step," adding that the fight continues "so that the terrorist organization is definitely defeated."

Also unclear is who will replace him as leader. The group has lost many of its senior commanders in US-led airstrikes, including Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, described as the group's No. 2 who was killed in Iraq by an August 2015 US airstrike, and Abu Ali al-Anbari, the extremist group's leading finance official, who was killed in 2016. Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the ISIS spokesman and one of the group's best-known commanders, also was reported to have been killed in 2016 by a Russian airstrike.

Al-Baghdadi was born as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai sometime in 1971 in Samarra, Iraq, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, according to a UN sanctions list. His hometown later would be the site of a 2006 bombing by Sunni fighters on a revered Shiite shrine – an attack that sparked a wave of sectarian violence that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

Details of his early life are murky. A brief biography posted to online jihadi forums in 2014 traced his lineage to the Prophet Muhammad's Quraysh tribe. Its claims, which cannot be independently confirmed, describe al-Baghdadi as coming from a religious family and earning a doctorate from Saddam University for Islamic Studies, the Iraqi capital's main center at the time for Sunni clerical scholarship. It says he promoted the Salafi jihadi movement, which advocates "holy war" to bring about a strict, uncompromising version of Islamic law, or Shariah.

According to ISIS-affiliated websites, al-Baghdadi was detained by US forces in Iraq and sent to Bucca prison in 2004 for his anti-US activities, although he was considered a civilian detainee and his jailers were unaware of his jihadi role. He was released 10 months later and joined the al-Qaida branch in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Zarqawi was killed by a US airstrike north of Baghdad in 2006 and al-Baghdadi became a trusted aide of its two most senior figures, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri. Al-Baghdadi assumed control of the group, known at the time as the Islamic State of Iraq.

The group he inherited, al-Qaida's official franchise in Iraq, already had been weakened by years of US and Iraqi raids and the mobilization of large numbers of Sunni fighters opposed to its extremist ideology. But al-Baghdadi was playing a long game.

Deploying suicide attackers, roadside explosives, car bombs and Kalashnikov-toting gunmen, he increased the tempo of assaults against Iraqi forces and Shiite civilians as the US military drew down its troops ahead of their December 2011 withdrawal. Prison breaks, including a military-style assault on two Baghdad-area jails in July 2013 that freed more than 500 inmates, bolstered his group's ranks.

The chaos of the uprising against President Bashar Assad in Syria provided an opportunity to expand his influence. Al-Baghdadi sent comrades to create a like-minded Sunni extremist group known as the Nusra Front, which more moderate Sunni rebels initially welcomed.

Over time, more of his fighters and possibly al-Baghdadi himself relocated to Syria, pursuing their plans to restore a medieval Islamic state, or caliphate, spanning both Iraq and greater Syria, also known as the Levant. In April 2013, al-Baghdadi announced what amounted to a hostile takeover of the Nusra Front, saying he was merging it into a new group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The move caught both the Nusra Front and al-Qaida's central command off guard.

Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani refused to accept the takeover. Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaida's top leader, tried to end the squabbling and ordered al-Baghdadi's group to be abolished.

Al-Baghdadi, however, would not compromise, and al-Qaida eventually had enough. In February, it formally distanced itself from al-Baghdadi, saying it had no connection with his group and "is not responsible for its actions."

But al-Baghdadi's organization was well on its way to achieving the proto-state it coveted, taking control of key cities such as Raqqa, Syria, and Fallujah in Iraq.

Then came the offensive that would draw the US back into Iraq. In June 2014, al-Baghdadi's fighters and allied Sunni fighters seized Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul and other Sunni-dominated communities in the north and west of the country. Government troops in many areas put up little resistance, abandoning their posts and leaving behind valuable American-made material. Al-Baghdadi's fighters posted propaganda videos of its forces gunning down captured Shiite troops en masse.

By month's end, the group announced its own state governed by Islamic law. Al-Baghdadi became the declared "caliph" of the newly renamed Islamic State group, and Muslims worldwide were urged to pledge allegiance to him.

On June 29, 2014, the group released a video showing a man purporting to be al-Baghdadi giving a sermon at a Mosul mosque.

"It is a burden to accept this responsibility to be in charge of you," he said. "I am not better than you or more virtuous than you. If you see me on the right path, help me. If you see me on the wrong path, advise me and halt me. And obey me as far as I obey God."

Then-US President Barack Obama launched airstrikes against ISIS beginning Aug. 8. He acted after thousands of Iraqi Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion with ties to Zoroastrianism, were targeted by al-Baghdadi's fighters, and to safeguard US interests, including a consulate in the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital of Erbil.

Islamic State terrorists responded by beheading Western captives, beginning with freelance American journalist James Foley, and posting their deeds in gruesome online videos.

The US and Arab allies eventually expanded the military campaign to target ISIS fighters with airstrikes in Syria, helping US-backed Kurdish fighters battle the group.

Under pressure in both countries, the group turned outward, claiming responsibility for the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris in which 130 people died, and the March 22 attacks in Brussels that left 32 people dead.

Iraqi officials said al-Baghdadi was wounded in an airstrike on Nov. 8, 2014, in the town of Qa'im, near the Syrian border in Iraq's Anbar province. Days later, an online audio message purportedly from al-Baghdadi urged his followers to "explode the volcanoes of jihad everywhere."

Little is known about al-Baghdadi's family. An ex-wife, Saja al-Dulaimi, and her daughter from al-Baghdadi, were detained in Lebanon in 2014. She was released a year later as part of a swap with al-Qaida in exchange for kidnapped Lebanese soldiers and police. In July 2018, ISIS said al-Baghdadi's son, Huthaifa al-Badri, was killed fighting government forces in central Syria.

On April 30, he appeared in a video for the first time in five years, acknowledging defeat in the group's last stronghold in Syria but vowing a "long battle" ahead. He appeared with a bushy gray and red beard, wearing a black robe with a beige vest and seated on the floor with what appears to be an AK-74 rifle propped up next to him.

The man said to be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the video also claimed the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka that killed over 250 people were "part of the revenge" against the West.

"Our battle today is a war of attrition to harm the enemy, and they should know that jihad will continue until doomsday," al-Baghdadi said.

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The Syrian state news agency SANA said the warplane had been hit by an anti-aircraft missile fired by militants while on a mission "to destroy headquarters of the Nusra Front," a jihadist group now known as Tahrir al-Sham.

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Tahrir al-Sham, the most powerful insurgent group in the area, said its fighters had shot down a Sukhoi 22 jet that had taken off from a Syrian airbase in Homs province. It did not say how the jet had been brought down.

SANA said the pilot's fate was unknown. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports on the war using a network of sources, said a pilot who ejected from the plane had been captured by insurgents.

The Observatory said that heavy machine guns had been used to shoot down the jet.

The jet was downed near Khan Sheikhoun, a rebel-held town that was hit by a sarin gas attack in 2017 and is now being targeted in a Russian-backed government offensive.

Government forces seized new ground from rebels near Khan Sheikhoun on Wednesday, advancing to within a few miles of the town. A rebel commander told Reuters that the town, in opposition hands since 2014, was in "great danger".

Dozens of people were killed in Khan Sheikhoun in 2017 in the poison gas attack that prompted US President Donald Trump to order a missile strike against the Syrian airbase from where the United States said it had been launched.

An investigation conducted by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said the Syrian government was responsible for releasing sarin gas on the town on April 4, 2017. Damascus denies using such weapons.

Syrian rebels have shot down government planes on several occasions during the war that spiraled out of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime in 2011.

The northwestern Idlib region is part of the last major stronghold of the opposition to Assad.

Assad's side had struggled to make any gains in the area in an offensive launched in late April. But since the collapse of a brief ceasefire this month, it has managed to take several significant positions, including the town of Al-Habeet on Saturday.

The advance toward Khan Sheikhoun threatens to encircle the last remaining pocket of rebel-held territory in neighboring Hama province, including the towns of Morek, Kafr Zeita and Latamneh.

The humanitarian adviser to the UN Special Envoy for Syria said that the new surge in violence in the northwest threatened the lives of millions after more than 500 civilians were killed since late April.

Tahrir al-Sham is the latest incarnation of the group formerly known as the Nusra Front, which was al-Qaida's official wing in the Syrian conflict until they parted ways in 2016.

The group is designated as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council.

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Ranwa Rasmi Mahmoud Shanawi, 22, a resident of the town of Jadeidi-Makr, was arrested upon her return to Israel in early May and taken for interrogation. Shanawi informed investigators that she had been in contact with a Syrian citizen who suggested she come to Syria and join the Nusra Front. Shawai agreed, seeking a "martyr's death."

Shanawi stole money from her family to pay for her plane ticket. She flew from Israel to Turkey on March 18, and once in Turkey used fake documents to cross the border into Syria. She spent approximately a year in Syria, during which time she reached out to the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front terrorist group and stayed with them until she was arrested and imprisoned in Idlib by fellow members of the group.

After she was released, Shanawi asked to remain active with the Nusra Front, but they sent her back to Turkey, from where she was returned to Israel.

On Friday, the Northern District of the State Attorney's Office filed an indictment against Shanawi on a number of serious terror-related charges.

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