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Scores of Syrian soldiers have been killed by a suicide car bomb in the central province of Hama and at least 20 rebel fighters were killed in an air strike in the northwest province of Idlib, activists have said.
Monday’s clashes came as the main Syrian opposition, the Syrian National Council (SNC), in makeover talks in Qatar, agreed to expand its structure to accommodate 13 other groups, a spokesman said.
A unit of the Armed Forces and security members at Taftanaz Airport in Idlib confronted several armed terrorist groups which attacked the airport with heavy weapons and mortars.
An official source told SANA reporter that the Armed Forces killed a large number of terrorists and destroyed their vehicles which were equipped with machineguns, in addition to destroying a weapons carrier.
A new video from the Syria conflict that circulated via the Internet on Thursday showed antigovernment fighters armed with rifles kicking and summarily executing a group of prisoners, apparently soldiers or militiamen, in what human rights activists called evidence of a war crime and another indication that both sides were increasingly committing atrocities.
The graphic video, which could not be authenticated independently but still attracted the attention of Amnesty International and other rights groups, appeared to have been made in Saraqeb, a town in Idlib Province in northern Syria that has been the scene of particularly brutal fighting between rebels and loyalists in the 20-month-old conflict.
Syrian rebels killed 78 soldiers on Thursday, about half of them in attacks on military checkpoints in the north just hours after a wave of bombings hit the Damascus area, activists said.
The unusually high toll for regime forces came after days of intense air bombardment of rebel positions around the country that killed hundreds more.
Syrian opposition backers say fighting and airstrikes across the country killed more than 120 people Tuesday, including a government air force general.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Syrian warplanes struck Maarat al-Numan, a strategic, rebel-held town on the Damascus-Aleppo highway.