BEIRUT (AFP) -
Over 100
troops, pro-regime militia, jihadists and rebels have been killed in
four days of fierce fighting on a strategic front of Syria's Aleppo
province, a monitoring group said Wednesday.
Since Sunday,
fighting around Al-Eis and Khan Tuman in Aleppo's southern belt has
killed 61 rebels and members of Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front and
50 troops and pro-regime militia, said the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights.
"In the past 24 hours alone, 42 rebels and Al-Nusra
members died, as well as 34 regime loyalists," Observatory director Rami
Abdel Rahman said.
Regime troops are trying to recapture Al-Eis,
held by Al-Nusra and rebel allies, which in turn have launched an
offensive to take over nearby Khan Touman from the regime.
The
fighting came as UN-brokered indirect talks resumed in Geneva,
threatening to break a fragile six-week truce that was brokered by the
United States and Russia.
Neither Al-Nusra nor the jihadist
Islamic State group are included in the truce, but the fact that rebels
are fighting alongside Al-Nusra while regime forces push back has
sparked concerns over its durability.
Washington voiced concern
Monday that a regime assault on Al-Nusra in Aleppo could spread to more
moderate factions, and cause the truce to collapse and derail the peace
efforts.
The area where the fighting is focused is important
because it is located near the highway linking Damascus to war-ravaged
Aleppo city, the Observatory said.
It is also key because it is
near the Shiite towns of Fuaa and Kefraya in neighbouring Idlib
province, which are under siege by opposition forces.
"Most of the regime loyalists killed were militia fighters from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan," Abdel Rahman said.
"For them, this is an ideologically-driven battle to break the siege on Fua and Kefraya," he told AFP.
Abdel
Rahman said the fighting shows that neither President Bashar al-Assad's
regime nor the opposition represented at the Geneva talks calls the
shots in fighting on the ground.
"The real decisions are made by
(regime backers) Iran and Russia on one side, and jihadist factions and
opposition backers on the other," he said.
Syria's war began as a
popular anti-regime revolt but later morphed into a brutal civil war
after Damascus unleashed a brutal crackdown on dissent.
© 2016 AFP
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