BEIRUT, Lebanon — A loyalist of Osama bin Laden who trained fighters to battle American troops in Iraq and became a commander of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria was killed there in the last week along with three fellow leaders, according to Syrian insurgents and a monitoring organization.
Reports differed on exactly when and how the commander, Samir Hijazi, and the other leaders of the affiliate, the Nusra Front, were killed. But the deaths of so many top figures, if confirmed, would signal a sharp blow to the Nusra Front, one of the strongest insurgent factions fighting the Syrian government.
The reports led other rebels in the four-year-old Syrian conflict to speculate that the group had been infiltrated by enemies.
The Nusra Front was the first major jihadist group to make its presence known in Syria, although it has since been eclipsed by the Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate on territory it controls in Iraq and Syria and has shocked the world with videos showing the beheading and incineration of captives.
A United States-led military coalition has focused on bombing the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, but has also targeted bases used by the Nusra Front. American officials have said that the group includes dangerous career jihadists who seek to strike the United States.
Mr. Hijazi, known by the noms de guerre Farouq al-Shami and Abu Humam al-Shami, appeared to fit that description, having moved with Al Qaeda from one battlefield to the next over the last decade and a half, according to a jihadist biography published in an online video.
Mr. Hijazi, a native Syrian, went to Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where he trained at a number of camps, graduating second in his class behind one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, according to the biography.
Mr. Hijazi became a trainer himself, pledged allegiance in person to Bin Laden and then trained fighters for the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
He later fled to Lebanon, where he was arrested in 2007 and sentenced to five years in prison on terrorism-related charges, according to Lebanese security officials, who provided his real name and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of government policy.
Mr. Hijazi was released in 2012 and went to Syria, his home country, to join the Nusra Front, they said.
He was little known outside of jihadist circles, but appeared in an online video last year to discuss a conflict with other rebels.
Reports that he had been killed in northern Syria along with the other Nusra leaders surfaced on Thursday.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who goes by the pseudonym Rami Abdul Rahman for security reasons, said that Mr. Hijazi and another Nusra leader had died on Thursday in Idlib Province, near the Turkish border, but that it remained unclear what had killed them.
The other leader, known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, was also a veteran jihadist who had been among the Nusra Front’s founding members.
Two other Nusra leaders were killed and several others wounded in an apparent airstrike on their base near the Turkish border on Feb. 27, Mr. Abdul Rahman said.
The Nusra Front has not confirmed the deaths on its social media accounts, but posted images of the destroyed base, blaming the American-led coalition for striking it.
Other rebels in the area said at least some of the men had been killed in an airstrike on Thursday.
The Pentagon said through a spokeswoman that it could not confirm the deaths of senior Nusra leaders and that the coalition had not launched airstrikes in that area “in recent days.”
The Syrian state news agency, SANA, also reported the death of Mr. Hijazi, but said he had been killed by Syrian government forces further south of the Turkish border.
The leaders’ reported deaths came after the Nusra Front had extended its control over much of northwestern Syria, mostly by routing more moderate rebel groups.
One such group, the Hazm Movement, received anti-tank missiles and other arms from a covert program by the Central Intelligence Agency and other countries, operated across the border in Turkey.
Hazm announced this week that it had disbanded after the Nusra Front took over one of its bases and seized its arms.
It remained unclear how the deaths would disrupt the Nusra Front, which has branches in different parts of Syria that appear to operate independently.
Hassan Abu Haniyeh, a Jordanian expert on Islamist groups, confirmed the outlines of Mr. Hijazi’s biography and said that the Nusra Front has long lacked internal cohesion, with some members sticking to Al Qaeda’s goal of attacking the West, while others preferred to focus on ousting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
Internal discussions on whether to declare an Islamic emirate to compete with ISIS or to cut ties with Al Qaeda in hopes of receiving more military aid have divided the group’s fighters, Mr. Abu Haniyeh said, although they band together in the face of common enemies.
“There have been differences from the start about what exactly the group stands for,” Mr. Abu Haniyeh said. “And now they are in a very hard situation.”
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