Nearly 50 fighters have been killed in three days of clashes between jihadists and mainstream rebels in Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday.

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Rebel groups in Syria are accused of killing as many as 190 civilians and taking 200 hostages during an offensive in August, Human Rights Watch claims.

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigation claims there were executions and indiscriminate shootings in the Latakia countryside, and that hostages are still being held by the Islamic state of Iraq and Sham (ISIS) and Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar.

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Syrian government warplanes bombed rebel positions near a strategic northern city on Tuesday, activists said, as international inspectors toured production and storage sites of the country’s chemical weapons arsenal.

The rebels captured Maaret al-Numan a year ago, after systematically seizing the army’s outposts in the city, along astride a major supply route linking the capital, Damascus with the contested Idlib region and Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.

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Islamist rebel groups in Syria have signed a joint statement asking al-Qaeda fighters in the north to pull back from their confrontation with another rebel faction, underscoring the gradual emergence of a new, Salafist-leaning middle ground within the disparate ranks of the armed opposition.

Six factions, including Ahrar al-Sham and the recently-formed Jaish al-Islam coalition, called on the hardline Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis) and the local Northern Storm Brigade to cease fighting in Azaz and settle their differences in an Islamic court.

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An al-Qaeda affiliated group in Iraq has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings that killed dozens of people across Baghdad Province.

In a statement released late on Monday, the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, took responsibility for the bombings which “simultaneously hit selected targets.”

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