AMMAN, Jordan
(AP) -- Government troops fired mortar rounds that slammed into a main
market in a town in northern Syria on Sunday, killing at least 20
civilians, activist groups said.
The mortar
shells struck the town of Ariha, 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
U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local
Coordination Committees, two opposition groups tracking the violence in
Syria, said at least 20 people were killed including two children and
two women. It was not immediately clear what triggered the shelling.
Also Sunday, state media said government forces killed nearly 50 rebels in an ambush near Damascus.
Separately,
Kurdish rebels freed the local commander of an al-Qaida-linked group in
a town near Syria's northern border with Turkey in return for 300
Kurdish civilians detained by the group, as part of an agreement to end
rebel infighting that erupted a day earlier in the region.
The
commander in the town of Tal Abyad, who is known as Abu Musaab, was
captured during intense fighting between the Islamic State in Iraq and
the Levant and Kurdish militants late Saturday, the Observatory said.
The Islamic fighters retaliated by rounding up civilians believed to be
relatives of the Kurdish fighters to hold as bargaining chips.
Infighting
between al-Qaida militants and more mainstream Syrian rebels, as well
as between Kurds and Arabs, has grown more common in Syria in recent
weeks - part of a power struggle that is undermining their efforts to
topple President Bashar Assad.
Kurdish gunmen
have been fighting to expel al-Qaida militants - many of whom are
foreign fighters - from the northeastern province of Hassakeh over the
past week. More than 60 fighters have been killed from both sides,
according to activists.
On Saturday evening, the fighting spread to Tal Abyad, which is located in neighboring Raqqa province near the Turkish border.
The
inter-rebel clashes, along with the 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 Assad regime is making significant advances on the ground.
In
recent weeks, Assad's troops have seized the momentum in the civil war,
now in its third year. His forces have been on offensive against rebels
on several fronts, including in the north.
Observatory
director Rami Abdul-Rahman said Abu Musaab was seized by Kurdish
fighters late Saturday during clashes between the two sides. That
prompted the al-Qaida militants to arrest hundreds of Kurdish residents
in retaliation. He said Kurdish rebels freed Abu Musaab Sunday following
mediation for a cease-fire and an agreement that the militants would
release 300 civilian Kurds in exchange. The fighting subsided Sunday.
Kurds,
the largest ethnic minority in Syria, make up more than 10 percent of
the country's 23 million people. Their loyalties in the conflict are
split between the two sides. Most Kurds live in the poor northeastern
regions of Hassakeh and Qamishli, wedged in between the borders of
Turkey and Iraq. Damascus and Aleppo also have several predominantly
Kurdish neighborhoods.
More than 93,000 people
have been killed since the Syria uprising started in March 2011,
according to the United Nations. It escalated into a civil war after
opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government
crackdown.
In the northeastern suburbs of
Damascus, regime forces killed scores of rebels in an ambush early
Sunday. State-run news agency SANA did not give a number but said the
army in Adra "eliminated a number of terrorist members of Jabhat
al-Nusra trying to infiltrate" suburbs near the capital, a reference to
an al-Qaida affiliated rebel group.
The
Observatory confirmed the ambush in Adra, saying 49 rebels were killed.
It said an elite Republican Guard officer who led the ambush was also
killed.
Also Sunday, activists reported rare
fighting between rebels and regime forces in the coastal province of
Tartus, a stronghold of Assad's minority Alawite sect.
The
Observatory accused the regime of killing 13 members of the same
family, including four women and six children, in an attack in the Sunni
Muslim village of Bayda following the clashes. The village is
predominantly Sunni but is located in the Alawite ancestral heartland.
It was the site of a mass killing in May.
Syrian
state television claimed that a pro-government group hacked into two
social messaging networks and seized records of local users.
That
could expose Syrian rebels and other activists who depend on the
networks to publicize army crackdowns on their hometowns and communicate
with each other. Many telephone landlines and cellphones in Syria are
assumed to be tapped.
The TV said the social
networking site Tango was hacked on Sunday by the Syrian Electronic
Army, a shadowy group that supports Assad's regime.
Tango
confirmed in a statement that it had experienced "cyber intrusion that
resulted in a brief, unauthorized access to some data on Friday.
Increased security protocols are now in place."
Syrian media said another network - Truecaller - also was hacked last week.
A
spokesman for the company, Kim Fai Kok, confirmed that Truecaller's
website had been hacked, but the hackers only got ahold of so-called
tokens that don't contain any information that can identify users. Fai
Kok said the company has been able to trace the hacker attack to Syria
and has now taken extra measures to improve the security of its
services.
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