BEIRUT: A coalition of Syrian rebel and jihadi groups Monday seized the strategic Handarat area north of Aleppo after 12 hours of fierce clashes, pro-opposition activists said.
The pro-opposition Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack began when a fighter from the Nusra Front detonated an explosives-packed vehicle at the southern entrance to the village.
The Shamiah Front, a coalition of conservative militias, said the area had been completely taken after “legendary battles with the Iranian occupation,” a reference to Syrian regime forces and their paramilitary allies from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The development represented another setback for the regime’s recent efforts to seize territory north of Aleppo, cut off the rebel groups’ supply lines to Turkey and besiege opposition fighters in the divided city.
The Observatory did not give a casualty figure for the battles, while the Shamiah Front said the area was “full of” regime fighters’ corpses.
The Observatory and several other sources said regime airstrikes pounded the Handarat area as well as the city of Aleppo during the fighting.
The regime and its allies suffered heavy casualties when they sought last month to seize several villages to the northeast of Handarat but were gradually repulsed by rebel groups.
In Deraa, anti-regime activists accused the regime forces of using chlorine gas in a barrel bomb attack on the village of Mzeireb.
They posted video footage purporting to show a young man suffering from asphyxiation as he is being treated in a field hospital, adding that at least seven people were killed when helicopters dropped two barrel bombs on the village.
The U.N. Security Council last week passed a resolution condemning the use of toxic materials in the Syrian war and threatened to punish further use with military force. It did not assign blame for the widely reported use of chemicals such as chlorine, although officials from several Western countries have blamed Damascus.
Elsewhere, U.S.-led coalition airstrikes on oil refineries run by ISIS in northern Syria killed 30 people, mostly jihadis, the Observatory said.
The Observatory said coalition warplanes launched two strikes Sunday on oil facilities in Raqqa province, a stronghold of the extremist group, which borders Turkey.
Raids have frequently targeted oil facilities run by ISIS, who according to some estimates earn more than $1 million per day from oil sales.
Also Monday, ISIS militants fought battles with Kurdish militiamen and their allies in several parts of northern Syria. The Observatory said 13 Kurds and an unknown number of ISIS fighters were killed near Ain al-Arab, weeks after the jihadis were ejected from the border town.
In recent days the Kurdish YPG militia and Syrian rebel groups have approached the ISIS-held town of Jarablous on the Euphrates River, west of Ain al-Arab.
In Hassakeh province, the YPG and its allies fought ISIS militants outside the town of Ras al-Ain on the Turkish border, as well as around the towns of Tal Tamr and Tal Brak further east, where ISIS militants launched an offensive last month.Separately, at least nine members of ISIS were killed during infighting in northwestern Syria after some of them tried to flee over the Turkish border, the Observatory said.
The fighters clashed Saturday near the town of Al-Bab, 30 km south of the Turkish frontier, the Observatory said. Five of the escapees and four of those trying to prevent them fleeing were killed.
Those trying to escape included one Tunisian and nine Europeans, the Observatory’s Rami Abdel-Rahman said, adding tha it was not clear which members had been killed.
It is not the first time that ISIS has killed its own members. The Observatory reported in December that the group had killed more than 120 of its fighters in two months, most of them foreigners trying to return home.
The fighting Saturday erupted when 10 ISIS combatants broke out of a prison run by the group. The five escapees who were not killed were recaptured by the group, the Observatory said.
Nusra Front denies plan to break away from Al-Qaeda network
Agence France Presse BEIRUT: The Nusra Front reaffirmed Monday its allegiance to the global Al-Qaeda network and denied any plan to break away and become a more internationally acceptable rebel force.
The angry statement followed weeks of speculation on social media of a split between the jihadi allies. Nusra “completely denies reports of a breakup with Al-Qaeda,” the group said in a statement on Twitter.
The statement said Nusra “remains the backbone of jihadis” in Syria, “the first into battle, dedicated to unifying the ranks around Shariah ... righting injustice and defending the disadvantaged.”
It denied “completely all reports of a meeting with Qatari or other intelligence services or seeking Qatari or Gulf funding, as this is contrary to the principles on which Nusra has been based from the start.”
An official branch of Al-Qaeda since April 2013 according to experts, the group dominates a swath of northwest Syria.
The idea of a rupture with Al-Qaeda emerged in early 2014 in Deir al-Zor when Nusra militants allied with the conservative Islamic Front alliance and the mainstream Free Syrian Army, “but it fizzled out,” said Thomas Pierret, an expert at the University of Edinburgh.
“Nusra’s internal dynamics since the summer of 2014 do not point at all to a moderate tendency and a break with Al-Qaeda.”
Dozens escape ISIS-run jail in Syria: monitor
Reuters BEIRUT: Around 95 captives have escaped an ISIS-run prison in northern Syria, a group monitoring the war said on Tuesday, saying the escapees included about 30 Kurdish fighters.
The jailbreak happened in the town of al-Bab, 30 km (20 miles) south of the Turkish frontier, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State controls tracts of territory across northern Syria and runs its own prisons, courts and other facilities in what it describes as an Islamic caliphate extending into Iraq.
Kurdish fighters backed by U.S.-led air strikes have been trying to drive back Islamic State across northern Syria.
The escapees also included Syrian civilians and members of Islamic battalions opposed to the more hardline Islamic State, the Observatory said.
Islamic State has put the town on high alert and has been using loudspeakers to tell citizens to capture the escapees, the Observatory said, citing people on the ground.
Al-Bab was the site of Islamic State infighting over the weekend when several of its members broke out of another jail in the town and tried to head for the Turkish border.
The group, which included mainly European fighters, was stopped by other Islamic State members in clashes that killed at least nine, the Observatory said.
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