Russia: Al-Qaeda-linked extremists hold 200 Kurdish civilians hostage as ‘live shield’ in Syria.

Al-Qaeda-linked extremists have taken and continue to hold hostage about 200 Kurdish civilians, including women and children, using them as live shields in north-eastern Syria, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has stated.
Civilians remain hostage after Syrian Kurds clashed with Al-Qaeda linked militants in the north-eastern Syrian towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain, along the Syrian-Turkish border over the weekend.
"In these areas, there has long been confrontation between the troops of the international extremists affiliated with al-Qaeda and local Kurdish militias who stood up to protect their homes from attacks by radical Islamists," Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on its website.
Syrian Kurd fighters captured a rebel leader, or emir, identified as Abu Musab. In response, Al-Qaeda extremists abducted 500 civilians, including woman and children.
“They started to kill innocent people by cutting off their heads,” the statement read. “Kurds had to free Abu Musab in exchange for an agreement to release hostages.”
Despite the Kurdish fighters agreed to release Abu Musab in exchange for people, about 200 people are still in the hands of extremists. The commander was freed as agreed. 
The Kurdish gunmen have been fighting to expel al-Qaeda militants from the northeastern province of Hassakeh over the past week, with the battle significantly intensifying over the weekend.

The clashes between the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) and the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jahbat al-Nusra erupted in the city of Ras al-Ain in the northern province of Hasakeh on July 16, when at least four militants were killed.  
 
The Kurds issued a “victory message,” celebrating the “liberation” of Ras al-Ain, claiming to hold control over the entire city as well as the headquarters of the Islamist combatant groups there. 
On Saturday evening, the fighting spread to the city of Tal Abyad. 
"Moscow strongly condemns the atrocities of international terrorists in northeastern Syria and the excesses and abuses perpetrated by extremists against a peaceful Kurdish population which is not involved in the ongoing political and military conflict in Syria," the Ministry said.
The city of Ras al-Ain is home to some 50,000 people including a mix of Kurds, Arabs, Christians, and Yezidis – a Kurdish religious minority. 
London-based RT contributor Afshin Rattansi says Western powers supporting organizations like al-Qaeda-linked Jahbat al-Nusra are to be blamed for the situation in northern Syria.

“There has been a discrimination of Kurds in that region, but now we have a situation where the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Britain are actively supporting al-Qaeda-linked organizations that are ransacking and murdering women and children - certainly over the past 48 hours,” he said. “All we are hearing from London and Washington are talks about a no-fly zone and arming the very people who are killing women and children there. And from Turkey, certainly the Turkish right wing has brought ideas of invading Syria from the north to kill more Kurdish people.”

Rattansi says the UN Security Council (UNSC) should look closely at the situation there. 
“Russia and China should bring this up at the UNSC. Otherwise, the prospect for these 200 hostages is pretty grim,” he said.(RT)
 http://on.rt.com/6hhudx

Syrian rebel group which has proclaimed loyalty to al-Qaeda to fightback.

A Syrian rebel group which has proclaimed loyalty to al-Qaeda posted an audio recording attributed to its leader on Monday in which he promised a fightback.
In the recording,  al-Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani also hit out at Lebanon's Hezbollah whose public intervention in the Syrian conflict since late April has been a major factor in recent rebel reverses.
 Julani's speech, entitled: "The Coming Days are Better Than Those of the Past," were his first since April 10, SITE Intelligence, which monitored the posting, said.
 In it, the Nusra leader warned Lebanese Shias not to allow Hezbollah to drag them into a proxy war in Syria on behalf of its Iranian backers.
 "I say that abandoning Hezbollah and disowning it will save you from woes and disasters that you would do without," SITE quoted him as saying.
Julani also warned other rebel groups in Syria against the dangers of accepting support from Arab or Western governments.
In his last public intervention in April, Julani spoke out against the al-Qaeda leadership in neighbouring Iraq for its attempt to steamroller a merger between rebels in the two countries.
He made no reference in his latest speech to the controversy, which sparked a split among al-Qaeda loyalists inside Syria between al-Nusra and the rival al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria.
[AFP]

Syria activists say family of 13 killed in Sunni village

(Reuters) - Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad killed at least 13 members of a family in the Sunni Muslim village of Baida on Sunday, in what activists said was the second massacre there.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four women and six children were among those killed in the village, which is in a coastal area of central Syria.
"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 Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory.
In May, pro-Assad militias killed more than 50 residents of Baida and over 60 locals in the nearby town of Banias. In those killings, some bodies, many of them children, were found burned and mutilated.
Baida is part of a small pocket of Sunni Muslims in the Mediterranean province of Tartous, a stronghold for Assad's own minority Alawite sect.
The two-year-old uprising against four decades of Assad family rule has been led by Syria's Sunni majority. Sectarian clashes and alleged massacres have become increasingly common in a conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people.
The killings in Baida came a day after a rare eruption of clashes was reported in the area between Assad's forces and the rebels in the coastal enclave.
The British-based Observatory, which has a network of activists across Syria, said all the victims had been executed.
(Reporting by Erika Solomon, editing by Gareth Jones)

Islamist-Kurdish fighting spreads in rebel-held Syria

(Reuters) - The local commander of a Syrian rebel group affiliated to al Qaeda was freed on Sunday after being held by Kurdish forces in a power struggle between rival organizations fighting President Bashar al-Assad, activists said.
However, the pro-opposition activists gave conflicting reports of how the Islamist brigade commander in the Syrian town of Tel 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 Sham (ISIS). 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 pitted Islamists trying to cement their control of rebel zones against Kurds trying to assert their autonomy in mostly Kurdish areas.
The trouble highlights how the two-year insurgency against 43 years of Assad family rule is spinning off into strife within his opponents' ranks, running the risk of creating regionalized conflicts that could also destabilize neighboring countries.
The factional fighting could also help Assad's forces, who have launched an offensive to retake territory.
BELT OF TERRITORY
Assad has been trying to secure a belt of territory from Damascus through Homs and up to his heartland on the Mediterranean coast and, with the help of the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, has won a string of victories in Homs province and near the capital.
On Sunday his forces ambushed and killed 49 rebels in the Damascus suburb of Adra, the Observatory said.
The town was once a critical point along the route used by rebels to bring weapons to the capital, but Assad's forces recaptured it a few months ago and have been working to cut off rebel territories in the area.
To the north, activists reported Turkish troops reinforcing their side of the frontier near Tel Abyad, but the army could not be reached for comment. Turkish forces exchanged fire with Syrian Kurdish fighters in another border region earlier in the week.
The Observatory said the alleged prisoner exchange was part of a ceasefire agreed after a day of fierce clashes in Tel Abyad, but other activists said there was no deal and reported that many Kurdish residents were being held by ISIS fighters.
The Observatory said the fighting in Tel Abyad started when the local ISIS brigade asked Kurdish Front forces, which have fought with the rebels against Assad, to pledge allegiance to Abu Musaab, which they refused to do.
Other activists said the clashes were an extension of fighting that broke out last week in other parts of the northern border zone.
Opposition activists also reported the killing of at least 13 members of a family in the Sunni Muslim village of Baida on Sunday, in what they described as a second sectarian massacre there.
FIGHTING NEAR THE COAST
The killings followed a rare eruption of fighting between Assad's forces and rebels in the 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 Shi'ite Islam, have largely supported Assad, himself an Alawite.
The Observatory said four women and six children were among those killed in Baida.
"A relative came to look for them today and found the men shot outside. The women's 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 Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory.
In May, pro-Assad militias killed more than 50 residents of Baida and over 60 in the nearby town of Banias. In those killings, some bodies, many of them children, were found burned and mutilated.
The anti-Assad revolt has evolved from its origins as a peaceful protest movement in March 2011 into a civil war that has killed over 100,000 people and turned markedly sectarian.
The ethnic Kurdish minority has been alternately battling both Assad's forces and the Islamist-dominated rebels. Kurds argue they support the revolt but rebels accuse them of making deals with the government in order to ensure their security and autonomy during the conflict.
The Kurdish people, scattered over the territories of Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, are often described as the world's largest ethnic community without a state of their own.
(Additional reporting by Isabel Coles in Arbil and Jonathan Burch in Ankara; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Islamist rebels would gain sway in long Syrian war: U.S. official

(Reuters) - - Radical Islamist rebels will gain sway over the many disparate factions opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad unless they are checked, and the country's civil war could last years, a top Pentagon intelligence official said on Saturday.
David Shedd, the deputy director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, did not advocate any form of intervention by the United States or its allies, saying that was up to policymakers.
But his bleak assessment of the dangers posed by the Islamist al-Nusra Front and al Qaeda's Iraq-based wing, as well as the prospects for a prolonged conflict, could bolster advocates of greater involvement by the United States and its allies.
Addressing the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Shedd said he counted at least 1,200 groups in the opposition. He said many of the groups were preoccupied with strictly local grievances, like a lack of potable water in their villages.
"Left unchecked, I'm very concerned that the most radical elements will take over larger segments" of the opposition groups, Shedd said, strongly hinting at the need for some kind of outside intervention.
He said the conflict could drag on anywhere "from many, many months to multiple years," and that a prolonged stalemate could leave open parts of Syria to potential control by radical fighters.
"They will not go home when it's over," Shedd said, envisioning one scenario where Assad retreats to an enclave and other parts of the country are up for grabs. "They will fight for that space, and they're there for the long haul."
Shedd added he and the DIA never thought Assad's regime would fall quickly - comments that appeared to stand in contrast to predictions by U.S. officials a year ago that Assad's days were numbered.
"DIA's position was that (Assad's fall) was no earlier than the start of this year. And it's obviously not happened," he said.
ARMING THE REBELS
U.S. plans to ship weapons to some rebels have been caught in a Washington impasse, after some members of Congress feared they would end up in the hands of Islamist militants.
Asked whether he thought more secular opposition fighters should be strengthened, or whether more radical rebel groups need somehow to be confronted, Shedd said: "I think it's too simple to say it's one or the other."
"Because it's the reality that left unchecked they will become bigger," he said, cautioning that the al-Nusra Front was gaining in strength and was "a case of serious concern."
Rivalries have been growing between the Free Syrian Army(FSA) and Islamists, whose smaller but more effective forces control most of the rebel-held parts of northern Syria more than two years after pro-democracy protests became an uprising. The conflict has killed more than 100,000 people.
The two sides previously fought together from time to time, but the Western and Arab-backed FSA, desperate for greater firepower, has tried to distance itself from the Islamists to allay U.S. fears any arms it might supply could reach al Qaeda.
Shedd's comments came as FSA rebels vent frustration at what they see as the slow pace of Western support. Britain, for example, has abandoned plans to arm rebels.
Shedd acknowledged identifying "good" versus "bad" rebels was very difficult.
"But I think (it is) a challenge that is well worth pursuing," he said.
Asked how the United States could avoid getting sucked into the conflict, Shedd said: "I believe relying on allies in the region is our best solution."
"We know that a number of the Gulf states have great concerns with the Bashar al-Assad regime. And I think that there are a number, and a sizeable number, of allies that would be prepared to work even more closely with us," he said.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Eric Beech)

Syrian Kurdish fighters expelled fighters of al-Qaeda linked groups from a checkpoint in the northeast

Syrian Kurdish fighters in the northeast of the country expelled fighters of al-Qaeda linked groups from a checkpoint on Saturday and seized their weapons and ammunition, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
The advance comes just days after Kurdish fighters loyal to the Democratic Union Party (PYD) expelled fighters allied to the Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) from the strategic Kurdish town of Ras al-Ain.
"Clashes raged during the night from Friday to Saturday, pitting (Kurdish fighters) against Al-Nusra Front, ISIS and other (rebel) groups... near the villages of Tal Alu, Karhuk and Ali Agha," said the Britain-based Observatory.
The clashes "ended at 8:00 am (0500 GMT), when the Kurdish popular committees seized control of a... (key) checkpoint" there, said the group.
The Kurdish fighters then seized ammunition, light weapons, a vehicle mounting a heavy machine gun and a mortar launcher from the jihadists, the Observatory added. [AFP]

Syrian rebel fighters killed 12 members of a pro-regime People's Committees

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that, Syrian rebel fighters killed 12 members of a pro-regime People's Committees clashes overnight in the central city of Homs, and troops responded by shelling them on Friday.
The rebel-held district is one of several regime forces have laid siege to for more than a year.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists, doctors and lawyers on the ground, said government troops were continuing to shell the neighbourhood on Friday.
In northeastern province of Hassakeh, clashes raged between Kurdish fighters and jihadists from the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
SOHR said a Nusra fighter blew himself up near the headquarters of the Kurdish YPG brigade, which has in recent days pushed jihadist fighters out of the town of Ras al-Ain.
[AFP]

Rebel infighting each other in Syria undermining revolt

BEIRUT (AP) -- On Syria's front lines, al-Qaida fighters and more mainstream Syrian rebels have turned against each other in a power struggle that has undermined the effort to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

After violent clashes and the assassination of two rival commanders, one of whom was beheaded, more moderate factions are publicly accusing the extremists of trying to seize control of the rebellion.

The rivalries - along with the efforts by extremist foreign fighters to impose their strict interpretation of Islam in areas they control - are chipping away at the movement's popularity in Syria at a time when the regime is making significant advances on the ground.

"The rebels' focus has shifted from toppling the regime to governing and power struggles," said a 29-year-old woman from the contested city of Homs. "I feel that the lack of true leadership is and has always been their biggest problem." She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from the fighters and the regime.

The infighting, which exploded into the open in the country's rebel-held north in recent days, is contributing to a sense across many parts of Syria that the revolution has faltered. It threatens to fracture an opposition movement that has been plagued by divisions from the start.

The moderates once valued the expertise and resources that their uneasy allies brought to the battlefield, but now question whether such military assets are worth the trouble - not to mention the added difficulty in persuading the West to arm them.

"We don't want foreign fighters. We have enough men and we want them out of Syria," said Brig. Gen. Salim Idris, head of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group for dozens of brigades.

In strikingly blunt comments in an interview with Al-Arabiya on Monday, Idris, a secular-minded army defector who has the backing of foreign powers, accused members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant of being regime agents and "criminals."

That group, formed in April and made up of al-Qaida's branches in Iraq and Syria, has taken on an increasingly dominant role in the Syrian civil war. Many of its fighters are north Africans, Iraqis, Afghans and Europeans who have flocked to Syria to join the overwhelmingly Sunni uprising against Assad.

Gunmen from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were behind the killings of the two rebel commanders, the highest-profile casualties of the growing tensions between jihadi fighters and Western-supported rebels.

Kamal Hamami, known as Abu Basir, served in the Supreme Military Council. Activists say he was shot late Thursday in a clash that erupted after militants tried to remove a checkpoint he set up on the Jabal al-Turkoman mountain in the coastal province of Latakia. Two of his men were seriously wounded in the shooting.

Also last week, members of the extremist group killed Fadi al-Qish, the local commander of a group affiliated with the mainstream Free Syrian Army, or FSA. The fatal attack took place in the village of Dana in the northern province of Idlib near the Turkish border. Activists say the militants decapitated al-Qish and another fighter and left their severed heads on the ground as a lesson to other rebels who challenge their rule in the area.

The executions have enraged FSA commanders, who are demanding that the killers be handed over to stand trial.

Activists also say extremists have recently been sweeping into villages previously controlled by the FSA, taking over crucial resources such as bakeries, oil wells and water pumps to secure people's loyalties. In several cases, the militants were said to seize weapons from army bases and keep them from other rebels.

But what alienates the general population is the brutality. The extremists have carried out summary executions, public floggings and mass arrests, fueling the backlash against them.

In one prominent case in Aleppo last month, al-Qaida-linked militants executed a 15-year-old boy, Mohammad Qattaa, accusing him of being an "infidel" for mentioning Islam's Prophet Muhammad in vain. Gunmen shot the boy dead in front of his parents near a stand where he sold coffee in a killing that sparked rare local protests against them.

In many parts of Aleppo and Idlib and Homs, where a suffocating stalemate has been in place since last year, residents say their support and patience for the rebels is fraying.

In Aleppo last week, residents staged a protest at a checkpoint against a blockade imposed by the militants on government-held districts, because the blockade created food shortages at the onset of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. The protest led to a physical quarrel between supporters and opponents of the siege and ended with gunshots fired in the air to disperse protesters.

Syria's uprising started in March 2011 as an Arab Spring-inspired revolt against the decades-long Assad family rule. It eventually transformed into an insurgency and civil war in response to a brutal government crackdown against the protests. More than 93,000 have been killed and millions uprooted from their homes.

The rebels are a disparate mix of ordinary citizens who took up weapons, army defectors, moderates and hard-liners, and increasingly, jihadists who have trekked to Syria from all over the world. A shortage of weapons and the inability of external players to interfere in the conflict to tip the balance in favor of one side or another has worked against the rebels.

Some FSA commanders are trying to tamp down the dispute with the al-Qaida militants, mindful of the damage the infighting has done to their cause.

"Their actions are despicable, but we will not be drawn into a fight with them," said one commander, who declined to be named so as not to aggravate the situation.

FSA spokesman Loay al-Mikdad was less delicate.

"I think they should come out in public and tell the Syrian people why they are in Syria. Is it to fight Bashar Assad or to impose a specific agenda on the Syrian people?" he asked.

"We never see them on the battlefield anymore," he said of the al-Qaida militants. "We only see them in liberated areas either next to oil wells or trying to impose specific agendas on territories."

The dispute is not restricted to Islamic militants versus moderates. In the north, there has also been deadly infighting between Kurdish and Arab groups over control of captured territory along the border with Turkey.

"This infighting is very dangerous and is undermining our revolution," said Mohammed Kanaan, an activist based in the northern province of Idlib. "People are fed up and tired. ... They are starting to hate both sides," he said via Skype.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the al-Qaida militants are working to entrench themselves and secure a place in a post-Assad Syria.

"They are trying to control everything, they have a lot of money," most of it from private donations, he said.

Still, al-Mikdad ruled out a scenario similar to the Iraqi one, when U.S.-allied groups of Sunni fighters battled al-Qaida.

"Until now, the FSA does not consider itself in confrontation with these groups. Our weapons are directly only against Bashar Assad's troops," he said in a TV interview.

"But if a fight is imposed on us, we will defend ourselves," he said.

...............

 AP correspondent Yasmine Sakr contributed to this report.

Tensions increase within Syria rebel ranks

Free Syrian Army and al-Qaeda-linked fighters clash at Aleppo checkpoint, days after commander was shot by rival group.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda-linked fighters have clashed again, just days after a leader of the FSA was shot dead at a checkpoint after a row between fighters from the two groups.
Activists told Al Jazeera that the FSA and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Saturday fought for control of a strategic checkpoint in Aleppo city's Bustan al-Qasr district, a strategic gateway between rebel and government controlled territory.
Some members of the groups now fear that tensions will escalate, hampering rebel efforts to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Analysts say divisions between Syria's rebel groups are partly to blame for giving Assad's forces the chance to regain the upper hand in the conflict.
Leaders of the Western- and Arab-backed FSA told Al Jazeera that they did not consider the ISIL an enemy, but that they would defend themselves.
"They are welcome if they help us fight the regime," Colonel Abdel Rahman Suweis, a member of the FSA Supreme Military Council, said.
"But if they want to cause strife, impose a new understanding of religion and make Syria another Afghanistan, we will take the necessary measures."
While FSA units sometimes fight alongside groups with different ideologies, rivalries have increased and al-Qaeda-linked groups have been blamed for assassinations of commanders of moderate rebel units.
Families trapped in Qaboun.
Meanwhile, hundreds of families were trapped in a northeastern district of Qaboun in Damascus by government troops who fought fierce battles with rebel forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based anti-government rights group, reported.
"There is a siege because regime snipers are posted on the outskirts of Qaboun and this makes any attempt to leave difficult," the group said on Sunday.
"Violent clashes are underway between regime forces and rebels in Qaboun," in northeast Damascus where battles have raged for months as the army tries to boot out rebel forces, the Observatory said.
"The area has also been bombed by the army," added the watchdog, which relies on a network of activists, doctors and lawyers on the ground.

Source:    Al Jazeera and agencies

Rival rebel factions fight in Syria's largest city

BEIRUT (AP) -- Western-backed opposition fighters and a faction of al-Qaida-linked rebels turned their guns on each other Saturday in Syria's largest city, battling for control of a key checkpoint in the latest eruption of infighting among the forces trying to topple President Bashar Assad's regime, activists said.

The clashes between rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army and fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant underscored the growing phenomenon of rebel-on-rebel violence that has sapped strength from the broader anti-Assad movement. It also underscores the rebels' inability even more than two years into the conflict to unite around a unified command, as well as the deepening rift between more secular opposition fighters and Islamic extremists in the rebel ranks.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday's clashes were focused on the strategic checkpoint in Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr district that serves as the sole gateway between rebel-held eastern districts and the government-controlled areas in the west. Earlier this week, al-Qaida-linked militants seized the checkpoint and closed it for several days, cutting the flow of food supplies to the government-held quarters of the city. That spurred protests by residents suffering from food shortages at the start of the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan.

The Observatory said the fighting rattled the neighborhood throughout the morning, but subsided by the afternoon as the al-Qaida-linked rebels pulled out of the area. It was not clear which group was in control of the checkpoint, where residents were staging a protest to vent their anger at soaring food prices. The area also witnessed clashes between rebels and government troops.

One of the most troubling outbursts of infighting among opposition fighters took place Friday, when the FSA said one of its commanders, Kamal Hamami, was shot dead by al-Qaida militants in the Jabal al-Turkoman mountain area in the coastal province of Latakia. Hamami, known as Abu Basir, served in the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, a group headed by a secular-minded moderate that has the support of Western powers.

Activists monitoring Syria's more than 2-year-old conflict have previously reported sporadic infighting among rebel groups over control of the territory they've captured in the north along the border with Turkey. Those clashes were mostly between Kurdish and Arab rebels, and have subsided since a ceasefire agreement was reached earlier this year.

The fighting between moderate and jihadi groups that have for months battled Assad's regime together have become more frequent in recent weeks. The clashes have largely focused on border crossings with Turkey and vital installations, like bakeries, water wells, petrol stations and checkpoints in the north, according to the Observatory.

Another activist said the fighting is aimed at establishing control over the flow of food and aid to the residents. Each group is also trying to set up governing structures over the territory in the north the opposition has controlled for a year and take a cut of money from goods being smuggled into Syria over the border with Turkey.

The activists did not want to be quoted by name for fear of reprisal from both groups.

Militant Islamic groups, including those with links to al-Qaida, have been the most effective fighting force on the opposition side in the past year, spearheading many of the attacks that captured military bases, towns and villages and whole neighborhoods in Aleppo. In late February, Islamic battalions led the assault and conquered the eastern city of Raqqa, making it the first Syrian city to entirely fall under rebel control. Moderate factions are now fighting jihadi groups for a say in running of Raqqa.

In the central province of Homs, video emerged Saturday that appeared to show a government airstrike on the Krak des Chevaliers, one of the world's best-preserved Crusader castles. Government troops have been pressing an offensive against rebels in the province in recent months, and the town, which goes by the same name as the castle, has been under attack by regime troops for the past four days.

The Observatory said Syrian warplanes carried out at least three airstrikes in the area on Friday, but the activist group could not confirm whether the fortress itself had been hit. It also said government forces have ordered residents to evacuate the town, apparently in preparation for a full-scale attack on the area.

The imposing Krak des Chevaliers, which towers above the surrounding countryside from its hilltop perch, has a storied history. It held off a siege by the Muslim warrior Saladin nearly 900 years ago, and was lauded centuries later by Lawrence of Arabia for its beauty.

The fortress has already been damaged over the course of the civil war, but if the hit it took Friday is confirmed, it would mark the worst destruction to the building so far.

An amateur video posted to YouTube appeared to show a missile striking one of the castle's towers, sending a plume of smoke and dust into the sky. The off-camera narrator says the date is July 12, 2013. Another video purportedly taken from inside showed a hole in the thick stone ceiling of the castle, and a mound of debris and heavy stones under the open roof.

The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting on the events depicted.

Many of Syria's archaeological sites have been badly damaged by the country's civil war. Aleppo's centuries-old covered market was gutted by fire last year, while in April, the 11th-century minaret of the famed Umayyad Mosque that towered over the narrow stone alleyways of Aleppo's old quarter collapsed during fighting between troops and rebels.

By BARBARA SURK
Associated Press