Osama Mansour.

BEIRUT — On Thursday, Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate the Nusra Front mourned Thursday Lebanese militant Osama Mansour, who was killed during a shootout with police in Tripoli last week.

In a video tribute posted to the Twitter account of the group’s Qalamoun branch, Nusra called the notorious jihadi militant a “pure-blooded martyr”, displaying pictures of him in military fatigues and holding weapons and footage from his funeral.

The video included a “biography” of Mansour that detailed his “jihadi career”, starting from his experience as a Lebanese Army soldier, to fighting his opponents in Syria and Lebanon.

Mansour and his partner, Ahmad al-Nather, were killed in an Internal Security Forces operation in the northern city of Tripoli last Thursday.

The ISF said the operation was meant to arrest Salafist cleric Khaled Hoblos, but Mansour and Nather were nearby and instigated a shootout with officers.

The two men were shot dead while still in their vehicle.

Nusra said Mansour was the first to “actually defect” from the Lebanese army when he saw that the military was working as a “puppet” of Hezbollah.

The video, which ended with a speech by slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, followed by footage of Mansour singing Islamist chants, said the militant “started military training at a young age.”

He fought in a number of locations in Syria including al-Qusair, a village opposite Lebanon’s northeastern border which was re-capatured by the Syrian army and Hezbollah in June 2013.