Fighters of al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant carry their weapons during a parade at the Syrian town of Tel Abyad. (REUTERS)

Deadly clashes were reported Friday in northern Syria between Sunni Islamist jihadists linked to al-Qaeda and insurgents in other alliances, punctuating a growing schism within the armed Syrian opposition over the power exerted by its religiously radicalized members, many of them from other countries.

Antigovernment activists in the Aleppo area said that fighting had broken out near the Idlib Province town of Atareb, west of Aleppo, pitting members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, a powerful al-Qaeda affiliate that includes foreign fighters, against an array of seven homegrown Syrian rebel groups. The rebels call themselves the Mujahedeen Army, and they resent what they see as the affiliate’s hijacking of their struggle, now nearly three years old, to depose President Bashar al-Assad.

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Reports from Iraq say armed groups have seized parts of the western cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

Fighting erupted in Anbar Province on December 30 after security forces tore down a protest camp near Ramadi, inflaming simmering tensions between local Sunni Arabs and the Shi’ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

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Lebanese troops have arrested the leader of the Al-Qaeda-linked group that claimed a double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut in November, the defense minister told AFP Wednesday.

Majid al-Majid, the “emir” of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, “was arrested by the intelligence services of the Lebanese army in Beirut,” Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn said, without specifying when the arrest took place.

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The Syrian troops on Sunday killed as many as 73 rebels in separate clashes nationwide, the state-media reported, as opposition activists claimed that aerial bombing on rebel-held areas in Aleppo killed 471 people over the past week.

The official SANA news agency said the Syrian troops killed 30 “terrorists” from the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and other jihadist groups during a series of “qualitative” operations in two areas of the rebel-held Douma suburb, east of the capital Damascus.

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Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has claimed the deadly attacks on a TV complex in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, in which a news anchor and four other people died.

ISIS claimed responsibility for Monday’s assaults on Al-Iraqiya state TV and Salaheddin TV in a statement posted to jihadist websites.

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