A rocket attack on Israel from Gaza. According to the State Department, the MSC has been involved in several attacks against Israel. Abdallah al-Ashqar is reported to be the leader of the group. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – The leader of a terrorist group operating in Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula has been designated by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist.

Abdallah al-Ashqar—a Palestinian who is reported to be the leader of the Mujahidin Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem (MSC), which America designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in August 2014—has been designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 1322, which targets terrorists and those providing support to them.

Al-Ashqar serves on the terror group’s military committee and is also its foreign relations liaison, a role in which he was workd to obtain missiles and other materials to attack Israel.

According to the State Department, MSC, which has links to al-Qaeda, has been involved in several attacks against Israel since the group was founded in 2012, including a 2013 rocket attack against the southern Israeli city of Eilat and previous terror attacks that used improvised explosive devices to kill Israeli civilians near the Egyptian border.