Ruritanians, obviously[JPost] Video and images from the June 14, 2020 airstrike show the car was hit in the passenger side of the front window and the roof, apparently using two missiles.
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A drone was filmed over Idlib on Sunday and allegedly carried out a strike on a car using the secretive R9X "ninja" missile, a modified version of a Hellfire missile that uses blades to kill instead of a warhead. A bloody body and what appeared to be a blade from the weapon were seen in a Hyundai as people shouted and sought to aid the deceased passenger.
A short history follows:
This weapon first was revealed in May 2019 reports that appeared to confirm a mysterious weapon that struck vehicles from Syria to Yemen and penetrated the top of cars like knife going through butter, opening them up like a tin can. This weapon was reportedly used to kill Abu Khayr al-Masri, a deputy of Al-Qaeda, in Idlib province in February 2017.
Al-Masri was born in Egypt and had worked with Ayman al-Zawahiri. Apparently detained in Iran he went to Syria after being released by Tehran in 2015 and moved to Idlib to work with the Nusra front. Nusra is Syria's Al-Qaeda branch. Nusra later became Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The area where al-Masri, which means "the Egyptian" was killed, Al-Mastumah, was 44km south of an area called Barisha that Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi moved to after the defeat of ISIS in Raqqa in 2017.
Video and images from the June 14, 2020 airstrike show the car was hit in the passenger side of the front window and the roof, apparently using two missiles. It is reminiscent of another December 2019 drone strike that killed Jordanian member of Hurras al-Din, a man named Bilal Khuraisat or Abu Khadija al-Urduni.
Now another Jordanian and a Yemeni have apparently been killed. They were also linked to Hurras al-Din. The group is said to be an Al-Qaeda breakaway. The dead were named as Qassam al-Urduni, or Qassam the Jordanian, and Bilal al-Sanaani. One man with a leg missing and gashes was reportedly brought to a hospital and photos of him were released. He was said to be alive.
The airstrikes all seem similar. The missile, with up to six swords popping out of an area above its visual guidance at the tip, slice through the passenger side of the car and cut up the target. These are believed to be modified Hellfire missiles, the missiles used since the early 2000s on US armed drones. The modified missile is sometimes called a "Ginsu" but is technically also named an R9X. These are big munitions, about the size of an adult male. They weight 100 lbs.