ANKARA: Clashes between secular Syrian rebels and their rivals from an al-Qaeda-linked faction have spread from the country’s opposition-held areas in the north to a key eastern city, Aljazeera reported Friday.
Monday’s rebel-on-rebel fighting in the eastern city of Raqqa, a long-time bastion of an al-Qaeda-linked group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), reflects a widening war within a war in Syria, as the Free Syrian Army tries to quell more hardline elements of the opposition.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 482 people have been killed in the infighting.
The Observatory said the toll includes 240 rebels, 157 fighters from the “Islamic State” and 85 civilians.
The fighting has spread across four provinces in opposition-held parts of northern Syria since it began last Friday.
The clashes erupted in the northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib on Friday after the al-Qaida-linked group used brutal tactics to implement its strict interpretation of Islamic law, and by kidnapping and killing of opponents.
ISIL is dominated by foreign fighters who initially fanned into Syria from neighbouring countries in March and set up camp in areas rebels had wrested from government forces, imposing a deeply conservative interpretation of Islamic law in the process.
Popular resentment towards the group from civilians has been building as the months progress and ISIL fighters began imprisoning citizens for perceived transgressions against Islam.
The rebels, meanwhile, have accused ISIL of overtaking their areas, seizing their weapons and detaining their fighters.
Rebel alliance
Raqqa is the only provincial capital to have fallen out of regime hands since the conflict erupted when regime opponents took up arms following a bloody crackdown by Assad’s forces on protests in March 2011.
But it soon fell into the grip of ISIL, which is said to be holding hundreds of prisoners in their now besieged Raqqa headquarters, among them rival rebels, activists and journalists.
Monday’s offensive in Raqqa came after three powerful rebel alliances on Friday launched what they called a second “revolution” against ISIL in the northern province of Aleppo and Idlib to its west.
“The foreigners are being held in other buildings, outside Raqqa city,” said the Observatory.
Another activist group, the Local Coordinating Committees, also reported the Raqqa clashes, saying they were focused around a city post office.
The Observatory said rebels had surrounded ISIL’s chief compound in Raqqa and had liberated at least 50 detainees from a nearby prison. Agencies
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