Al-Qaeda seizes Syrian town from rebels
Militants affiliated with al-Qaeda have stormed and seized a key town from rebels in northern Syria, leading to fierce clashes on Turkey’s border between jihadists and Western-backed opposition factions.
Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have taken control of Azaz, on a crucial rebel supply route near the border post with Turkey, killing opposing rebel fighters, arresting pro-Western opposition activists and setting up sniper positions on rooftops, eyewitnesses reported.
”They have controlled Azaz and the surrounding area since Wednesday,” said Hussein Halabi, a Syrian activist speaking from the Turkish border crossing of Bab al-Salameh, adding that rebels of the Free Syrian Army had begun fighting back. Gunfire and artillery rattled and boomed in the near distance as he spoke.
The seizure of the town puts al-Qaeda in control of territory immediately adjoining a NATO country for the first time, a development that will heighten fears in the West about the rapidly growing power of jihadist groups within the rebellion.
Activists in the area said ISIL fighters surrounded Ahli hospital in Azaz and demanded Northern Storm, the ruling Free Syrian Army group there, hand over a doctor and nurse, who they claimed had been taking photographs of wounded ISIL fighters in the hospital.
”The Northern Storm brigade refused to hand over the doctor. The argument escalated into a shoot-out that killed at least five of their fighters,” said one activist who did not want to be named. ”You cannot reason with al-Qaeda. You say no, and they shoot.”
Fighters from another FSA brigade in Aleppo, about 30 kilometres south of Azaz, were sent to try to broker a truce. ”Reinforcements from the Tawheed Brigade were sent to impose a ceasefire on the two sides,” a spokesman said. ”There is still no ceasefire yet.” The relationship between ISIL – many of whose fighters are veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan – and other rebel factions in northern Syria has been rancorous for more than a year.
Many of the original rebels against the Assad regime resent the presence of foreign jihadists in Syria, and disagree with al-Qaeda’s aim of transforming the country into an Islamic state. An opposition source said the FSA regarded the jihadist group as ”a direct threat” and were preparing to counter-attack in an attempt to ”finish them once and for all”.
A spokesman for the FSA was more cautious, and said the rebels would be too stretched to fight on two fronts.
”We are having meetings to try to understand why ISIL want to kill us,” Louay al-Mokdad said. ”We don’t have enough resources to attack them, but at the same time we have to protect our people.”
Al-Qaeda is trying to avoid mistakes it made during the Iraq war, where its efforts to impose a hardline interpretation of Islam on the Sunni population prompted a backlash.
In Syria, ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra, another al-Qaeda-affiliated group, have focused on humanitarian programs in rebel-held areas, trying to win over the people by supplying bread, gas and electricity.
But in recent months, residents have said, foreign jihadists have not shown the same patience, imposing strict Islamic law on rebel areas. There have been grim accounts of beheadings and people shot dead for minor infractions.
”I wanted to raise the Syrian opposition flag outside my coffee shop but my family stopped me because they fear I will be killed by al-Qaeda,” said one Aleppo resident.
Telegraph, London