The US says it has hit a group called "Khorasan" in Syria, but experts and Syria's so called "moderate" opposition argue it actually struck al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, al-Nusra Front, which fights alongside the Syria rebels.
In announcing its raids in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday, Washington described the group it targeted as Khorasan, a cell of al-Qaeda veterans planning attacks against the West. But many cast doubt on the distinction between Khorasan and al-Nusra Front.
"In Syria, no one had ever heard talk of Khorasan until the US media brought it up," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"Rebels, activists and the whole world knows that these positions (hit Tuesday) were al-Nusra positions, and the fighters killed were al-Nusra fighters," added Abdel Rahman, who has tracked the Syrian conflict since it erupted in 2011.
Aron Lund, editor of the Syria in Crisis website run by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, raised similar doubts.