Fresh reports reaching the desk of Africa Daily News, New York has revealed that up to thirteen people who are mostly fighters have been found to have been murdered in the two days of ongoing clashes between some of the rival factions competing for power in northwest Syria, a war monitor said Wednesday.
The terrible fighting between the two pro-Turkish Syrian rebel groups began in the town of Al-Bab in northern Aleppo province before spreading to other areas and drawing in other factions, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
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Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has been identified as a jihadist group which is being headed by ex-members of Syria’s former Al-Qaeda franchise, has also weighed in, it added in a statement. HTS mostly controls Syria’s main rebel-held northwestern region of Idlib, but other rebel groups are also active, with varying degrees of backing from Turkey.
Dozens of factions are competing for influence in northern Syria, leading to the current “chaos”, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
“Even if clashes began with a dispute between two groups, other factions took advantage of the opportunity to fight their opponents,” he added.
The death toll includes three civilians, the Observatory said, with AFP correspondents reporting that schools and markets had closed in Al-Bab, and dozens had fled the Afrin countryside further west.
In another report, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has announced that Moscow condemns in strong terms as unacceptable the ongoing Israeli attacks on Syria that could result in a significant military escalation.
‘We consider similar irresponsible moves by Israel to be absolutely inadmissible. We resolutely condemn them,’ Zakharova emphasised.
The Russian diplomat also claimed that the Israeli strikes are a flagrant violation of Syrian sovereignty and fundamental principles of international law.
