There are more than 60,00 Iranians fighting alongside forces loyal to Syria’s authoritarian president Bashar al-Assad, the leader of the country’s main opposition alliance claimed on Tuesday.

‘’In Syria, there are over 60,000 fighters from Iran,” said Ahmad Jarba.

For this reason Iran should not attend Syrian peace talks dubbed Geneva II scheduled to take place next month, Jarba said.

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A picture taken on October 18, 2012 shows two Syrian rebels taking sniper positions at the heavily contested neighborhood of Karm al-Jabal in central Aleppo. Picture: AFP

A senior rebel commander in southern Syria was killed in fighting with government troops in the town of Tafas on Monday, sources on both sides.

Lieutenant Colonel Yasser Abbud, “leader of the Fallujah-Houran brigade… was killed fighting against regime troops in Tafas”, a spokesman for the rebel Military Council in the southern province of Daraa said.

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An al-Qaeda suicide car bomber stormed a military base in Yemen’s southern province of Abyan Friday morning killing at least 15 soldiers and injuring dozens, a provincial security official told Xinhua.

“The suicide car bombing attack was carried out simultaneously with heavy machine gunfire by the militants on the 111th Brigade’s command centre in the district of Ahwar in Abyan province,” the official told Xinhua over phone.

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Iraqi officials say a series of bombings around the country have killed nearly 40 people.

The officials said there were several explosions in Baghdad that killed at least 24 people. More than 70 reportedly were injured.

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Syrian opposition fighters assaulted a regime-controlled central prison in the northern city of Aleppo on Wednesday, an NGO said.

The fighters launched an attack on the administration block of the prison which has been under siege for months, Agence France-Presse reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying.

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