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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South Sudan’s government and rebels sent delegates to peace talks in Ethiopia on Tuesday, officials said, but ethnic fighting raged on in the world’s youngest nation and both sides battled for control of a state capital.

Militias loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar fought their way on Tuesday morning into the centre of Bor, the main town in the vast, underdeveloped Jonglei state and the site of an ethnic massacre in 1991, witnesses said.

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The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) Thursday confirmed attacks on rebels who reportedly killed at least 42 civilians in the eastern province of North Kivu.

In a statement, the UN mission MONUSCO said its helicopters raided the Ugandan rebels ADF-NALU Wednesday and regained control of the positions seized by rebels, who were linked to the killing of 42 civilians in the village of Kamango bordering Uganda, Xinhua reported.

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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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Philippine communist rebels vowed Thursday to intensify attacks against government troops and build a 25,000-strong guerrilla force, but the military mocked the target as unrealistic.

New People’s Army guerrillas marked the 45th founding anniversary of their underground party with a clandestine gathering at a mountain lair, where they invited journalists in southeastern Agusan del Sur province.

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