Roundup: Nusra fights "war of elimination" against Yarmouk fighters in Syria

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The al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and other groups are fighting intense battles in Syria in the hope of liquidating a rival rebel group that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), reports said Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based watchdog group, said intense battles continued Friday between the Nusra affiliates and the so-called Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade in the western countryside of Syria's southern province of Daraa.

The pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV, meanwhile, said in a special report that the Nusra is fighting a "war of elimination" against the Yarmouk fighters, as a prelude to an imminent battle with the Islamic State militants, who are amassing at the Beir al-Qasab area in the northeastern entrance of Daraa countryside.

According to the report, nothing will stop the Nusra from its bid to terminate the Yarmouk group, which was formed in late 2012 and positioned around the village of Sahm in Daraa near the intersection of Jordan, Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The report said Nusra's pretext behind its attacks against the Yarmouk militants is the latter refusal to release some of the Nusra fighters they had captured before on charges of conspiring to kill the leaders of Yarmouk. The Nusra already killed one of the Yarmouk's leaders, called Musab Qarfan, in the town of Tsil west of Daraa.

However, there was other reasons behind the attack, mainly the allegiance that the leader of the Yarmouk group, Abu Ali al-Baradi, had pledged to the Islamic State's leader, Abu Bakr Baghdadi.

The loyalty of Yarmouk group to the IS threatens the plan of the Nusra Front of establishing an Islamic Emirate in southern Syria.

"The Nusra is preceding the arrival of the IS to Daraa by eliminating its ally in the area after the IS vanguards reached Beir al-Qasab, the northeastern key of Daraa," the TV report said.

Military experts said the reason behind the IS arrival to the outskirts of Daraa is its bid to facilitate the flow of its followers from neighboring Jordan toward the provinces of Swaida and Daraa to strip the Nusra of its influence in the southern rim of Syria.

Direct reasons behind the groups' allegiance to the IS are still murky. The Nusra Front and the IS both share the same ideology, but the rift between them is largely based on conflict of personal interests of their leaders, observers believe.

Meanwhile, al-Mayadeen said both Israel and Jordan backed the Yarmouk group and even the US intelligence trained its fighters on Jordanian soil.

It, however, noted that the group's loyalty to the IS would pose a threat to those countries in case the group survived the wide-scale offensive of the Nusra Front.

It said the Yarmouk group has 2,000 fighters and controls considerable part of the Syrian-Jordanian borders and about 45 kilometers out of the 76 kilometers of the disengagement zone between Syria's al-Qunaitera and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The group was responsible for snatching UN peacekeepers near Golan twice over the past couple of years and fought intense battles against the Syrian government troops in Daraa.

Over 190,000 people have been killed and millions of others displaced inside and outside the country as a result of the Syria crisis, which has become more complicated when radical groups capitalized on the chaotic situation to achieve territorial gains.

The Syrian government repeatedly accused neighboring countries of backing the extremist groups, mainly accusing Israel of backing the rebels near the Golan Heights.

Israel has reportedly provided medical treatment to the wounded rebels, especially after the emergence of photos purporting to show wounded Syrian rebels laying in Israeli hospitals while receiving medical treatment. Endit

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