The al-Qaeda-linked Islamist State of Iraq (ISIL) and the Levant executed dozens of rival Islamists over the last two days as the group recaptured most territory it had lost in the northeastern Syrian province of Raqqa, activists said on Sunday.
One of the activists, who spoke from the province on condition of anonymity, said up to 100 fighters from the Nusra Front, another al-Qaeda affiliate, and the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, captured by ISIL in the town of Tel Abyad on the border with Turkey, the nearby area of Qantari and the provincial capital city of Raqqa, were shot dead.
There was no independent confirmation of the report.
“About 70 bodies, most shot in the head, were collected and sent to the Raqqa National hospital,” the activist said.
“Many of those executed had been wounded in the fighting. The fact that Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham are ideologically similar to the ISIL did not matter,” he added.
ISIL’s growth has alarmed Western nations, who are pushing the opposition to attend peace talks in Switzerland in 10 days’ time, and has helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to portray himself as the only secular alternative to Islamist extremism.
Fighting between the ISIL and rival Islamists and more moderate rebels have killed hundreds of people over the last 10 days and shaken the hardline militant group led by foreign jihadists.
However, the ISIL regrouped and recaptured much of its stronghold in Raqqa city on Sunday, activists said, dealing a blow to rival rebel groups backed by Gulf Arab and Western states.
Among those reportedly executed on the weekend was Abu Saad al-Hadram, Nusra Front’s commander for Raqqa Province who was captured several months ago as tension mounted between the foreign-led ISIL and the more home-grown Nusra, opposition sources said.
To the north, ISIL recaptured the town of Tel Abyad on the border with Turkey over the weekend. As a result, Turkish authorities closed a border crossing near the town and pulled out the facility’s staff, according to the Syrian Revolution Coordinating Union, an opposition monitoring group.
There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials.
Abdallah Farraj, a member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition from Raqqa, said rebels had been able to expel ISIL from parts of the neighboring Aleppo Province, but it would be hard to shake ISIL’s hold on Raqqa and rural areas along key supply lines across the north.
“The rebels lack the organization and the firepower to win. It will be difficult to defeat ISIL without military strikes from someone like Turkey,” he said.
Abu Khaled al-Walid, an activist speaking from the border area, said many fighters from Ahrar al-Sham, one of the most powerful Islamist groups, chose not to confront ISIL because the combatants were local people with little enmity for each other.
“Many did not see a point in fighting their own relatives. ISIL is now in control of 95 percent of Raqqa and its rural environs. Tel Abyad is also back with it,” he said.
Raqqa, on the Euphrates River 385km northeast of Damascus, is the most significant city to have fallen completely to al-Assad’s opponents since the revolt against his family’s four-decade rule broke out in March 2011.
An ISIL statement called on Raqqa tribes to pull out their members from anti-ISIL rebel units and said the attacks against the group were designed to “destroy the nucleus of the caliphate” and promote a “heathen” alternative.
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