Clashes between two extremist factions in northwestern Syria left dozens of fighters dead on both sides and raised fears of more deadly violence between groups battling President Bashar Assad's troops ahead of UN-brokered peace talks, activists and insurgents said today.
The fighting between the al-Qaida-led coalition known as the Levant Liberation Committee and the extremist Jund al-Aqsa group left nearly 70 fighters dead in some of the deadliest clashes between insurgents in years, an opposition monitoring group and a rebel commander said.
The fighting centered in areas where the central province of Hama and the northwestern province of Idlib meet, they said.
A Syrian rebel commander speaking from Turkey said Jund al-Aqsa has proven recently that it is a branch of the Islamic State group that is the arch-rival of al-Qaida's Fatah al-Sham Front.
The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said Jund al-Aqsa fighters stormed several areas controlled by the Levant Liberation Committee and killed some of its members triggering intense fighting as of Monday.
"There is no solution but to uproot Jund al-Aqsa," the commander said by telephone.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks Syria's war, reported that the Levant Liberation Committee has captured six villages from Jund al-Aqsa so far.
The Observatory said two days of fighting has left 69 fighters dead, including 39 from the Levant Liberation Committee.
It said the 30 dead from Jund al-Aqsa includes four suicide attackers who blew up vehicles that they were driving. Abdul-Rahim Attoun, a senior al-Qaida religious official in Syria, blamed in an audio released late Monday Jund al-Aqsa for being a group that paid allegiance to IS.
He added that Jund al-Aqsa was blocking roads used by the Levant Liberation Committee to attack government forces.
A Jund al-Aqsa commander who goes by the name of Karmo told The Associated Press that the fighting was triggered by Levant Liberation Committee attacks on Jund al-Aqsa positions.
In the southern city of Daraa, where clashes between insurgents and government forces have continued for days, opposition activist Ahmad al-Masalmeh said an air raid hit a hospital in the city, putting it out of service. The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said there were reports of a hospital being and they were still working on confirmation.
The fighting came as a state-run newspaper said in an editorial that a meeting between the Syrian government and opposition in Kazakhstan this week will not be "fruitful" unless they are focused on fighting terrorism.
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