Man appears to tweet news of Syrian airstrikes before Pentagon confirms

Lindsay Deutsch

USA TODAY Network

This image made from amateur video posted on an activist social media account early Sept. 23, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows an explosion in the village of Kfar Derian, Syria.

The Pentagon announced Monday night that the U.S. military and Arab allies escalated the fight against the Islamic State with airstrikes in Syria.

But almost 30 minutes before the official confirmation, a Twitter handle claiming to be from a man named Abdulkader Hariri in Raqqa, Syria, released the news to the Internet.

"Breaking: Huge explosions shook the city in what might be the beginning of US airstrikes on ISIS HQs in Raqqa," Hariri tweeted on Sept. 22 at 9:03 p.m.

He then began to live-tweet the strikes.

It's not the first time a tweeter has revealed clues about major operations before official information was released. In 2011, a 31-year-old IT consultant named Sohaib Athar inadvertently live-tweeted the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Follow @lindsdee on Twitter.

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