The operation was overseen by U.S. Central Command, which claimed hours after the strike, without citing evidence or naming a suspect, that the Predator drone strike had targeted a “senior Al Qaeda leader.” But now there is doubt inside the Pentagon about who was killed, two U.S. defense officials told The Washington Post.

Lotfi Hassan Misto, 56, whose family identified him as the victim of a Hellfire missile attack on May 3, was a former bricklayer who lived quietly in this town in northwest Syria, according to interviews with his brother, son and six others who knew him. They described a kind, hard-working man whose “whole life was spent poor.”

Under pretext of fighting off terrorism, Washington has at least a dozen bases in Syria, mostly in the oil and gas fields in the northeastern region of Al-Jazzira, mainly in Hasakeh, while it maintains one in the Tanef area on the border with Iraq to prevent any land communication between these two countries.

The Damascus government has repeatedly condemned this illegal presence, which it described as an occupation, and assured that the U.S. actions in Syria encourage terrorist activity and aim at destabilizing the country and plundering its wealth.

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