Founded around 1991 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Jordan and trained in 1999 in Afghanistan with financial support from Osama bin Laden, the group has perpetrated several terrorist attacks since 2004 in countries such as Lebanon and Qatar.
[1] According to European Intelligence documents and Jordanian government sources, al-Zarqawi set up the Jund al-Sham's al-Matar Training Camp in 1999 in Afghanistan, near Herat, with $200,000 in startup money he received from Osama bin Laden.
Amnesty International reported on a September 2005 clash of Syrian Army against Jund al-Sham near Hama: Heba al-Khaled, Rola al-Khaled and Nadia al-Satour were arrested on 3 September 2005, following, according to Syrian state media, a gun battle in Hama province, in the west of the country, between the Anti-Terror Squad and militants of the Jund al-Sham ("Soldiers of the Levant") armed group.
They were reportedly held as hostages to put pressure on their husbands to give themselves up, even though Heba al-Khaled and her sister Rola al-Khaled were pregnant at the time they were detained, and Nadia al-Satour reportedly had her young baby with her.According to a pro-Syrian government blog, saroujah.blogspot.com critical of Palestinians being armed in their camps, in October 2005, Jund fought with a Nasserist group outside the Ain al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon, four people were injured.
[8] Also in October 2005, Jund al-Sham threatened to slaughter the German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who was heading the UN inquiry into the assassination of Lebanese business magnate and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The Associated Press reported that the fighting began when Jund al-Sham gunmen tried to assassinate Mahmoud Abdul-Hamid Issa, a Fatah military official, as he walked with his bodyguards.
These clashes followed a tense three weeks in Lebanon's north, where the Lebanese Army has been battling another militant group Fatah al-Islam at a Palestinian refugee camp.
[11] This Jund branch was composed of Lebanese Sunni fighters from Tripoli and north Lebanon and some Libyans,[citation needed] and it fought alongside the al-Nusra Front.
[12] In August 2013, two members of Jund al-Sham from Lebanese Tripoli were killed in a suicide bombing near a Syrian Army checkpoint in Homs District.