Over 150 opposition fighters executed in Syria

Syrian rebel fighters belonging to a hardline faction have executed scores of moderate opposition fighters in the west of the country in an increasingly bloody battle between different militant groups opposed to the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad, the SITE Intelligence Group said.

An offshoot of the Jund Al-Aqsa group killed more than 150 members of opposition factions in the village of Khan Sheikhoun in southern Idlib province, the US-based monitoring service reported yesterday.

Dozens of those executed were members of a Free Syrian Army (FSA) faction, it said, citing a pro-Al Qaeda social media outlet.

The rest included members of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham alliance, which includes the former Al-Qaeda branch in Syria, Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham, formerly known as the Al-Nusra Front.

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Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or the Sham Liberation Organisation (SLO), former earlier this year out of a merger of various groups, including the Nour Al-Din Al-Zinki faction, Jabhat Ansar Al-Din, the Army of the Sunnah and the Liwa Al-Haq group.

Jund Al-Aqsa is seen as ideologically close to the Daesh militant group, Al-Qaeda’s main rival.

Fighting between Jund Al-Aqsa and the SLO has flared in the past week, in clashes that war monitors say have killed dozens. Those clashes have added to the complexity of insurgent infighting in the west of the country.

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Both the SLO and Jund Al-Aqsa are also fighting against FSA factions who are backed by foreign powers, including the United States and neighbouring Turkey. Rebel groups attacked the FSA for sending delegates to peace talks in Kazakhstan last month.

Many of those FSA groups are now fighting under the banner of the moderate and powerful Islamist Ahrar Al-Sham, though the current leader of the SLO is Hashem Al-Sheikh, the former leader of Ahrar Al-Sham, who recently made his first video appearance promising to step up attacks against the Assad regime.