BEIRUT: The local commander of a Syrian rebel group affiliated with Al-Qaeda was freed Sunday after being held by Kurdish forces during a power struggle between rival groups fighting President Bashar Assad, activists said.

 

But the pro-opposition activists gave conflicting reports of how the Islamist brigade commander in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad near the Turkish border had come to be free.

 

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamist rebels had exchanged 300 Kurdish residents they had kidnapped for the local head of their group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Other activist groups challenged this account, saying Islamist fighters had freed Abu Musaab by force, with no Kurdish hostages released.

 

Sporadic fighting over the past five days in towns near the frontier with Turkey has underscored the struggle as Islamists try to cement their control of rebel zones while Kurds assert their autonomy in mostly Kurdish areas.

 

The inter-rebel clashes, along with efforts by extremist foreign fighters to impose their strict interpretation of Islam in areas they control, are chipping away at the opposition’s popularity at a time when the regime is making significant advances on the ground.

 

The Observatory said the fighting in Tal Abyad started when the local ISIS brigade asked Kurdish Front forces, which have fought with the rebels against Assad, to pledge their allegiance to Islamist leader Abu Musaab, a move they refused. Other activists said the clashes were an extension of fighting that broke out last week in other parts of the northern border zone, spreading conflict to Tal Abyad.

 

Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in Syria, make up over 10 percent of the country’s 23 million people. Kurds say they support the revolt but rebels accuse them of making deals with the government to ensure their security and autonomy during the conflict.

 

In the northeastern suburbs of Damascus, fighters with another Islamist group working to oust Assad were killed in an ambush early Sunday, state news reported.

 

SANA news agency did not give a number but said the army in Adra “eliminated a number of terrorist members of the Nusra Front trying to infiltrate” suburbs near the capital.

 

The Observatory confirmed the ambush in Adra, saying at least 49 rebels were killed and many others were missing. It said an elite Republican Guard officer who led the ambush was also killed.

 

Adra is an entry point to the capital’s Abbasiyeen Square, the target of several rebel attacks in recent months.

 

To the west, in the Sunni village of Bayda at least 13 members of the same family were killed Sunday in what opposition activists described as a second sectarian massacre there.

 

The killings followed a rare eruption of fighting between Assad’s forces and rebels in the Mediterranean coastal province of Tartous, an enclave of Assad’s Alawite minority sect that has remained largely unscathed by the civil war.

 

Syria’s marginalized Sunni majority has largely backed the insurrection while minorities such as the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, have largely supported Assad.

 

The Observatory said four women and six children were among those killed in Bayda.

 

“A relative came to look for them today and found the men shot outside. The women and children’s bodies were inside a room of the house and residents in the area said some of the bodies were burned,” said Rami Abdel-Rahman, head of the Observatory.

 

In May, pro-Assad militias killed more than 50 residents of Bayda and over 60 local people in the nearby town of Banias. In those killings, some bodies, many of them children, were found burned and mutilated.

 

Activists also reported another apparent “massacre” Sunday in the northwestern province of Idlib.

 

The shelling of Ariha by regime forces left 18 dead and dozens wounded, said the Observatory. Activists posted a video online showing people carrying corpses and bloodied body parts. Abdel-Rahman said regime forces opened fire on the main market in central Ariha from positions they control on the edges of town.

 

The mortar bombs struck the town, which is held mostly by opposition fighters, a few hours ahead of iftar, the meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

 

The Observatory said clashes had erupted in Ariha over the week, as rebels try to expand their control over the town.

 

Fighting also raged in Syria’s second city of Aleppo Sunday.

 

Government and opposition fighters fought around international airport and nearby air bases as the battle for Syria’s second city entered its second year, the Observatory said.

 

The violence in Aleppo comes a year after a massive rebel advance into the provincial capital. Stalemate has gripped the city ever since, splitting it into rebel-held and government-controlled areas.

 

Rebels have penetrated the regime-held Rashidin district of New Aleppo in a bid to break the stalemate.

 

The pro-regime Al-Watan daily Sunday said the Aleppo rebels had failed “to secure their goal of taking control of Syria’s commercial capital.”

 

The latest bloodshed came as Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil was due to travel Monday to Moscow for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on ways of ending the 28-month conflict.

 

In Cairo, the new leader of Syria’s main opposition coalition, Ahmad Jarba, has been meeting with Egyptian and Saudi leaders ahead of a trip to Paris for talks with French President Francois Hollande.

 

Newspapers have quoted Jarba as saying his priority is to secure arms for the rebels and that energy-rich Gulf monarchies could set up a $400-million fund to back the opposition coalition.