Syria's Islamic Front, the country's biggest rebel alliance, issued
Sunday a strong warning to jihadists, three days after a new front made up of
local insurgents emerged against them.
"We fight against whoever
attacks us and whoever pushes us to battle, whether they are Syrian or
foreign," said the Front, an alliance that groups tens of thousands of
rebels seeking to topple President Bashar Assad.
Since Friday, along with the Syrian
Revolutionaries Front and the nascent Army of Mujahedeen, the Front has been
engaged in fierce fighting with the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL).
The focus of combat has been in
opposition areas in Aleppo and Idlib provinces, but spread to Hama and Raqa
provinces on Sunday.
Scores of fighters have been killed
on both sides in battle as well as in ambushes, car bomb attacks and summary
executions by ISIL.
ISIL has been accused of horrific
abuses in areas where it operates, and also of seeking hegemony by taking key
roads and checkpoints from its rivals.
Some Assad opponents have even
accused it of serving regime interests.
"In our charter... we said we
are grateful and thankful to the foreigners who came to help us" in the
war against Assad's troops, the Islamic Front said in Sunday's statement.
But "we will not accept any
group that claims to be a state."
Analysts say a key complaint against
ISIL among rebels, including Islamists, is that its jihadists refuse to operate
within the broader opposition dynamic.
Instead, it commands its own
institutions and rejects cooperation with other rebel groups.
The Islamic Front's statement comes a
day after ISIL distributed an audio statement warning rebels to stop pressuring
it, or that it would withdraw from the front lines in Aleppo city and let in
Assad's forces.
ISIL also accused its rivals of
waging a "media war" against it, and of "stabbing (it) in the
back."
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