BEIRUT: A coalition of mainstream rebels and the Nusra Front seized the southern town of Nawa Sunday from Syrian government troops after months of intense fighting, anti-regime activists and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

 

Both local rebel groups and Al-Qaeda affiliate claimed credit for the opposition advance.

 

Nawa is in Deraa province bordering Jordan, the province of rural Damascus province and Qunaitra, which has a boundary on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

 

The advance came a day after regime air raids on a town held by the jihadist ISIS group in northeastern Syria killed 21 civilians and wounded 100, the Observatory said.

 

Syria’s military has increasingly resorted to using barrel bombs, which rights groups have condemned as a particularly indiscriminate weapon that often kills civilians.

 

“The Nusra Front, Islamist rebel brigades and [mainstream] rebel brigades took over the whole of Nawa town,” the Britain-based anti-regime group of activists said.

 

“Regime warplanes then carried out more airstrikes targeting the town and its surroundings.”

 

Local rebel groups issued a statement claiming that “now Nawa has been completely liberated.”

 

Activists distributed amateur video showing rebel fighters shooting in the air, riding tanks and stamping on the Syrian flag that they consider to represent the regime they are fighting.

 

The Nusra Front also distributed via the Internet photographs showing their black and white flag raised over Nawa.

 

While not openly admitting that the army had withdrawn, state news agency SANA said troops were “redeploying and reorganizing in the Nawa area ... in order to prepare for upcoming fighting.”

 

Sources close to the government acknowledged the insurgents also seized the surrounding areas of Sheikh Miskeen, Tal Hawran and a military headquarters known as the 122nd Brigade in the major offensive.

 

The development comes days after deep rifts between the Nusra Front and mainstream rebels in the northwestern province of Idlib led to the jihadist group expelling their rivals from their positions.

 

Speaking to AFP via the Internet, an activist in the southern province of Deraa said: “In the north, there are ideological differences between the [rebel] Free Syrian Army and Nusra Front.

 

“Here in Deraa, tribal ties run deep. There are no such rifts here,” Diaa al-Hariri said.

 

While suffering consecutive defeats at the hands of the army elsewhere in Syria, the rebels have been steadily advancing in Deraa province.

 

The Observatory says it was able to confirm the deaths of two rebels before the army’s withdrawal from Nawa Sunday, and that there were unconfirmed reports of more dead.

 

Elsewhere, the Observatory said two rebel commanders and one from the Nusra Front have been killed by unidentified gunmen in the northern province of Aleppo over the past three days.

 

In recent months, there has been a wave of murders of rebel leaders.

 

Also in the north, government helicopters and warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes overnight on a town controlled by ISIS, killing at least 21 people, activists said.

 

The air raids struck Al-Bab in Aleppo province late Saturday and lasted through early Sunday morning. The Aleppo Media Center activist collective and the Observatory both reported the attacks.

 

The Observatory said there were 10 strikes in total, including seven barrel bombs dropped from helicopters. He said at least 21 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.

 

The Aleppo Media Center put the death toll at 30, with 85 wounded. Differences in casualty figures are common in the chaotic aftermath of attacks in Syria.

 

And on the border town of Ain al-Arab, besieged by ISIS jihadists, at least four strikes by the U.S.-led coalition hit the predominantly Kurdish town Sunday.

 

The town, known as Kobani in Kurdish, has been besieged by ISIS fighters since September, becoming one of the highest-profile battlefields of the war.

 

Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters who have been drawn into the battle to back up their Syrian kinsmen, fired volleys of rockets toward ISIS positions in villages around the town. Machine-gun fire rang out through the center of Kobani, where several mortars also landed.

 

After losing scores of men in the weekslong assault, ISIS has now called on dozens of its fighters in the northeast of Aleppo province to head west toward the town, the Observatory said.