Washington: The US Monday added two men from terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq to its list of specially designated global terrorists and imposed sanctions on them.
Said Arif from al-Nusra Front, and Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the official spokesperson and a senior leader of the Islamic State, were targeted by the State Department three days after the UN Security Council decided to add them to its sanctions list, Xinhua reported.
Arif was described as an Algerian army officer, who travelled to Afghanistan in the 1990s, and trained in Al Qaeda camps with weapons and explosives.
Arif, a suspect in the Al Qaeda December 2000 plot to bomb the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, fled house arrest in France in October 2013 and joined the al-Nusra Front.
The US sanctions bar American citizens from doing business with them and freeze all of their assets under US jurisdiction.