BEIRUT: Kurdish militias battled al-Qaida-linked rebel groups in northeastern Syria on Tuesday in the latest round of heavy fighting that has helped fuel a mass exodus of civilians from the region into neighboring Iraq, activists said.

Clashes between Kurdish fighters and Islamic extremist rebel groups have sharply escalated in Syria’s northern provinces in recent months. The violence, which has left hundreds dead, holds the potential to explode into a full-blown side conflict within Syria’s broader civil war.

Tuesday’s fighting, which pitted Kurdish militiamen against rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, was focused in three villages near the town of Ras al-Ayn in the predominantly Kurdish Hassakeh province, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Around 30,000 Syrians, the vast majority of them Kurds, have fled the region over a five-day stretch and crossed the border to the self-ruled Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Another 4,000 made the trek across the frontier Tuesday, said Youssef Mahmoud, a spokesman for the UNHCR in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The new arrivals join some 1.9 million Syrians who already have found refuge abroad from the country’s relentless carnage.

Syrian refugees cross into Iraq at the Peshkhabour border point in Dahuk, 260 miles (430 kilometers) …

With belongings loaded onto mules, thousands of Syrian refugees continued to flow into northern Iraq through the border town of Peshkabour Tuesday, some describing hometowns where food, water and electricity have become scarce amid the combat.

Among them was Ali Balash, a Kurd from Hassakeh province who walked some five kilometers to cross the border with his 18-member family.

“War is rattling our areas, we were so scared to stay,” said Balash, a day laborer dressed in traditional Kurdish baggy pants and a scarf tucked into his belt.

A father of four children aged between 6 and 9, Balash’s face was pale as he reached the Iraqi territories. “We couldn’t go anywhere, we had no bread, no work and no stability,” he added.

Riding a mule into the area, a 65-year-old woman who identified herself only by her nickname, Um Abdullah, for security reasons, said she had made the journey with her sisters and children but left her husband behind to guard their house in Hassakeh.

Syrian refugees cross into Iraq at the Peshkhabour border point in Dahuk, 260 miles (430 kilometers) …

“We saw dead bodies in the streets and heard shootings and bombings all day,” she said.

The massive exodus has put a severe strain on Iraqi Kurdistan’s regional government and aid agencies ability to accommodate them all.

As many as 9,000 of the Syrians to just arrive have found temporary refuge at a transit site in Kawergost, north of the regional capital of Irbil, UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva. The scale and speed of the influx however has made it difficult to provide shelter for all of the families, he said, forcing some to camp under tarpaulins or other makeshift shelters.

The UNHCR said it is sending 15 truckloads of supplies — 3,100 tents, two pre-fabricated warehouses and thousands of jerry cans to carry water — from its regional stockpile in Jordan. It said the shipment should arrive by the end of the week.

Some 55,000 Syrians already live at the Domiz refugee camp in Dohuk, west of Irbil, according to the UNHCR.

Syrian refugees wait for buses after crossing the border toward Iraq at Peshkhabour border point in  …

Nancy Lindborg, A USAID Assistant Administrator for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, told reporters in Amman that the United States is “watching closely” the Kurdish exodus from Syria to northern Iraq.

“Today, there are about 40,000 people who already crossed,” she said. “Iraq opened its borders and we applaud their generosity in taking in more people.”

She said Washington had allocated $45 million out of $1 billion in aid for Syrian refugees in Iraq and “we’re looking at how we can contribute more.”

Kurds are Syria’s largest ethnic minority, making up more than 10 percent of the country’s 23 million people. They are centered in the poor northeastern regions of Hassakeh and Qamishli, wedged between the borders of Turkey and Iraq. There are also several predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods in the capital, Damascus, and Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.

Long oppressed by President Bashar Assad’s regime, Syria’s Kurds now find themselves enjoying near autonomy in the northeast after Assad’s overstretched forces pulled back from the region last year, ceding de facto control to Kurdish fighters. Some Kurds openly call for an officially autonomous region in Syria similar to that of northern

DAMASCUS; The head of a U.N. chemical weapons investigation team arrived in Syria on Wednesday to discuss his inquiry into allegations that chemical arms have been used in Syria’s civil war.

Ake Sellstrom’s full team has not been allowed into Syria due to diplomatic wrangling over access. His mission this week aims to reach an agreement for it to start work in Syria.

Sellstrom, a Swede, is accompanied by the head of the U.N. Office of Disarmament Affairs, Angela Kane, who said on her arrival in Damascus that their mission was to prepare the ground for an investigation into chemical weapons use.

The team’s visit is taking place at the invitation of the Syrian government and its members will meet Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem as well as technical experts.

Damascus has so far refused to let U.N. investigators go anywhere except Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and its Russian ally say rebels used chemical weapons in March.

Both sides deny using chemical weapons.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has insisted that his team be permitted to visit at least one other location, the city of Homs, site of an alleged chemical attack by government forces in December 2012.

BEIRUT (AP) — Gunmen assassinated a prominent Syrian pro-government figure at his home in southern Lebanon on Wednesday in the latest sign of Syria’s civil war spilling over into its smaller neighbor, security officials said.

Mohammed Darrar Jammo was gunned down, shot nearly 30 times, in the coastal town of Sarafand, a stronghold of the Shiite militant Hezbollah group, the officials said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. Assassinations of politicians, army officers and journalists who support President Bashar Assad’s regime are not uncommon in Syria, but the killing of a well-known Syrian in Lebanon is rare.

Violence linked to Syria’s civil war is increasingly washing across Lebanon, threatening to unleash large-scale fighting in the country. On Tuesday, a roadside bomb struck a Hezbollah convoy near the Syrian border, while last week a car bomb in south Beirut wounded 53 people in the heart of the militant group’s bastion of support.

Syria’s conflict has cut deep fissures through Lebanon and exposed the country’s split loyalties. Many Lebanese Sunnis support the overwhelmingly Sunni uprising against Assad in Syria, while Shiites generally back Hezbollah and the regime. Clashes between pro- and anti-Assad groups in Lebanon have left scores of people dead in recent months, and the violence has escalated as Hezbollah’s role fighting alongside the regime has become public.

Jammo, a 44-year-old political analyst who often appeared on Arab TV stations, was one of Assad’s most vociferous defenders. In frequent appearances on television talk shows, he would staunchly support the Syrian regime’s strong-armed response to the uprising and in at least one case shouted down opposition figures and called them “traitors.”

Siham, wife of Mohammed Darrar Jammo, a Syrian political analyst.

His hard-line stance earned him enemies among Syria’s opposition, and some in the anti-Assad camp referred to Jammo as “shabih,” a term used for pro-government gunmen who have been blamed for some of the worst mass killings of the civil war.

Lebanon’s state news agency published a photo Wednesday of a shirtless Jammo lying on a blue sheet stained with blood, his chest riddled with bullet wounds.

The Lebanese security officials said Jammo’s Lebanese wife and daughter were both in the house at the time of the attack. His daughter was later rushed to the hospital after suffering from shock, the officials said.

They added that a Lebanese man was detained near Jammo’s house in Sarafand shortly after the shooting and was being questioned.

President Barack Obama recently said the U.S. is willing to send weapons to the opposition. Even so, Washington has been reluctant to arm the rebels battling President Bashar Assad’s troops because radical Islamic groups, including some with al-Qaida links, have emerged as their most effective fighting force. Western countries have also been concerned over the lack of unified command among rebel groups.

The Western-backed Syrian National Coalition urged Congress to back arms deliveries to the rebels.

“The Syrian Coalition is deeply concerned by reports indicating that elements in the U.S. Congress are delaying the administration’s efforts to increase its support to the Free Syrian Army” it said in a statement late Thursday.

The coalition will ensure “that arms will not reach extremist elements,” it added.

Syria’s main rebel units, known as the Free Syrian Army or FSA, regrouped in December under a unified rebel command called the Supreme Military Council, following promises of more military assistance once a central council was in place. The Western-backed council is headed by Gen. Salim Idriss, who defected from the Syrian army, and a 30-member group of senior officers. Idriss spent 35 years in the Syrian military and is seen as a secular-minded moderate.

Some FSA units still operate autonomously, however, often fighting alongside more effective groups on the battlefield, including the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, which has led most successful battles for army bases, villages and towns in the north along the border with Turkey.

The group, known in English as The Nusra Front, has claimed responsibility for several car bombs and suicide attacks on military installations and government buildings, including in the capital Damascus, the seat of Assad’s power.

More than 93,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict that erupted in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests against Assad’s rule but escalated into a civil war in response to a brutal government crackdown.

Over the past year, the conflict became increasingly sectarian, with mostly-Sunni rebels assisted by foreign fighters while Assad’s forces are bolstered by fighters of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.

The regime in Damascus is also backed by Russia and Iran, and Moscow has continued to supply Assad with weapons throughout the crisis, saying it is fulfilling existing contracts.

The U.S., its European and Gulf allies have backed the opposition in the conflict, sending funds and non-lethal aid to the rebels.

In recent months, the rebels have gotten more powerful weaponry, including anti-tank missiles and surface-to-air missiles, likely from Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

But rebel commanders say they still need more sophisticated weapons to more effectively battle Assad forces’ superior fire power, including heavy artillery and fighter jets.

“The urgency of delivering these arms cannot be overstated as the regime continues to intensify its attacks on opposition forces in Homs, Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria,” the coalition said in a statement Thursday, quoting Najib Ghadbian, its envoy to the U.S.

The SNC said at least 4,000 people have been trapped for weeks in Homs, “with no access to medical care, food, or protection.”

Kamal Hamami, of the group’s Supreme Military Council, was meeting members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant “to discuss battle plans”.

A Free Syrian Army spokesman said he received a call from the Islamic State saying they had killed Kamal Hamami.

It is part of an escalating struggle within the armed uprising between moderates and Islamists.

Such infighting has led to concerns over plans by Western and Arab nations to arm the rebels in their bid to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Factional fighting

Mr Hamami, also known as Abu Bassel al-Ladkani, had been meeting members of the Islamic State in the port city of Latakia “to discuss battle plans”, Free Syrian Army spokesman Qassem Saadeddine said.

“The Islamic State phoned me saying that they killed Abu Bassel and that they will kill all of the Supreme Military Council,” he told Reuters news agency.

There have been many other such incidents in this factional fighting, the BBC’s Paul Woods reports from neighbouring Lebanon.

It is partly a battle over spoils and partly ideological, pitting the secular Free Syrian Army against Islamists who want to establish a theocracy, he adds.

The Free Syrian Army was formed in 2011 by army deserters based in Turkey and is said to have some 40,000 members.

Although they have had some successes in the fight against President Assad’s forces, they say they will be unable to win the war unless they acquire more sophisticated weaponry.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is one of the main groups in Syria linked to al-Qaeda, and has contributed to the spread of Sharia in rebel-held areas.

BEIRUT: More than 100,000 people have been killed since the start of Syria’s conflict over two years ago, an activist group said Wednesday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has been tracking the death toll in the conflict through a network of activists in Syria, released its death toll at a time when hopes for a negotiated settlement to end the civil war fade.

It said it had tallied a total of 100,191 deaths over the 27 months of the conflict, but Observatory chief Rami Abdul-Rahman said he expected the real number was higher as neither side was totally forthcoming about its losses.

Of the dead, 36,661 are civilians, the group said.

On the government side, 25,407 are members of President Bashar Assad’s armed forces, 17,311 are pro-government fighters and 169 are militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, who have fought alongside army troops.

Deaths among Assad’s opponents included 13,539 rebels, 2,015 army defectors and 2,518 foreign fighters battling against the regime.

Entry of the foreign media into Syria is severely restricted and few reports from the fighting can be independently verified.

Earlier this month, the U.N. put the number of those killed in the conflict at 93,000 between March 2011 when the crisis started and end of April this year.

The government has not released death tolls. The state media published the names of the government’s dead in the first months of the crisis, but then stopped publishing its losses after the opposition became an armed insurgency.

Abdul-Rahman said that the group’s tally of army casualties is based on information from military medical sources, records obtained by the group from state agencies and activists’ own count of military funerals in government areas of the country. Another source for regime fatalities are activist videos showing dead soldiers killed in rebel-held areas who are later identified.

Abdul-Rahman believes the number of combatants killed on both sides is probably much higher as neither the government nor the rebels are fully transparent about battlefield casualties.

Syria’s conflict began as peaceful protests against Assad’s rule. It gradually became an armed conflict after the Assad’s regime used the army to crackdown on dissent and some opposition supporters took up weapons to fight government troops.

Even the most modest international efforts to end the Syrian conflict have failed. U.N.’s special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, told reporters on Tuesday that an international peace conference proposed by Russia and the U.S. will not take place until later in the summer, partly because of opposition disarray.

The fighting has increasingly been taking sectarian overtones. Sunni Muslims dominate the rebel ranks while Assad’s regime is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam.

It has also spilled over Syria’s borders, especially into Lebanon, where factions supporting opposing sides have clashed in the northern city of Tripoli and in the eastern Bekaa valley. Lebanese are divided over Syria’s civil war with some supporting President Bashar Assad’s regime and others backing the opposition. More than 550,000 Syrians have fled to neighboring Lebanon as a result of the war.

Earlier this week, sectarian tensions drew Lebanon’s weak army into fighting. Eighteen soldiers were killed in a two-day battle between the army and supporters of a radical Sunni sheik in the southern city of Sidon. The army had earlier reported 17 deaths and said Wednesday that another soldier died of his wounds in a hospital.

The conflict reached the capital Beirut on Wednesday when masked men ambushed a bus and attacked the approximately 30 people aboard with knives, a Lebanese official said. He said 10 people were wounded in the attack in the eastern part of the city, including five Syrians, two Palestinians and three Lebanese, the officials said. He spoke anonymously in line with regulations.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the bus was carrying Syrians headed to a TV studio in the eastern Sunday Market district to take part in a cultural program. It said there were eight attackers, who fled the area.

The conflict has also polarized the region. Several Gulf states including Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia, Washington’s key ally and a foe of Iran, back the rebels. Tehran, a Shiite powerhouse, supports Assad.

BEIRUT: Activists say Syrian rebels have gained control of a key military base in the central Hama province after intense clashes with regime forces.

The base is on the northern edge of the town of Morek, which straddles the country’s strategic north-south highway leading to theprovince of Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the rebels seized the base after intense clashes with regime forces on Thursday.

The Observatory says the rebels killed six government troops and seized weapons and ammunition. A video posted on Hama activists’ Facebook page shows flames rising from the burning compound and the bodies of some of the killed fighters.

President Bashar Assad’s forces are waging an offensive to drive rebels out of the central provinces of Hama and Homs, and the northern Aleppo province.

Syrian state TV quoted a security official as saying 14 people died in explosions caused by two “terrorist” suicide bombers near a police station in the bustling Marjeh Square in the heart of the capital. The official said another 31 were wounded.

The state-TV Ikhbariya TV station showed footage of broken shop facades and mangled cars in the central square as ambulance workers were seen carrying the wounded on stretchers.

Marjeh Square was scene to previous attacks earlier this year.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria, said 15 were killed in the explosions, one of which caused by a man who blew himself up inside the police station in Marjeh square. The Observatory said the other explosion occurred outside the police station. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the two accounts.

Both the media and activists had originally reported two dead.

Suicide attacks and car bombs have become common in Damascus. Tuesday’s twin explosions in the capital are the first since government troops, backed by fighters from Lebanon’s Shiite group Hezbollah, captured Qusair, a strategic town in the central province of Homs, the linchpin linking Damascus with the regime strongholds on the Mediterranean coast.

Following the capture of Qusair, Syrian state-run media and the Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar TV have said the regime is preparing an offensive reportedly named Operation Northern Storm to recapture Aleppo. The regime was also believed to be advancing on the central city of Homs.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but car bombs and suicide attacks targeting Damascus and other cities that remain under government control have been claimed in the past by the al-Qaida affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra — one of scores of rebel factions fighting the forces of President Bashar Assad.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car in the central city of Homs, tearing through an area largely populated by the regime’s Alawite sect and killing seven people.

Syria’s conflict started with largely peaceful protests against Assad’s regime in March 2011 but eventually turned into a civil war that has killed more than 80,000 people, according to the United Nations.

BEIRUT: Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview broadcast Thursday that he is “confident in victory” in his country’s civil war, and he warned that Damascus would retaliate for any future Israeli airstrike on his territory.

Assad also told the Lebanese TV station Al-Manar that Russia has fulfilled some of its weapons contracts recently, but he was vague on whether this included advanced S-300 air defense systems.

The comments were in line with a forceful and confident message the regime has been sending in recent days, even as the international community attempts to launch a peace conference in Geneva, possibly next month. The strong tone coincided with recent military victories in battles with armed rebels trying to topple him.

The interview was broadcast as Syria’s main political opposition group appeared to fall into growing disarray.

The international community had hoped the two sides would start talks on a political transition. However, the opposition group, theSyrian National Coalition, said earlier Thursday that it would not attend a conference, linking the decision to a regime offensive on the western Syrian town of Qusair and claiming that hundreds of wounded people were trapped there.

Assad, who appeared animated and gestured frequently in the TV interview, said he has been confident from the start of the conflict more than two years ago that he would be able to defeat his opponents.

“Regarding my confidence about victory, had we not had this confidence, we wouldn’t have been able to fight in this battle for two years, facing an international attack,” he said. Assad portrayed the battle to unseat him as a “world war against Syria and the resistance” — a reference to the Lebanese Hezbollah, a close ally.

“We are confident and sure about victory, and I confirm that Syria will stay as it was,” he said, “but even more than before, in supporting resistance fighters in all the Arab world.”

Assad has said he would stay in power at least until elections scheduled in 2014, but he went further in the interview, saying he “will not hesitate to run again” if the Syrian people want him to do so.

Taking a tough line, he also warned that Syria would strike back hard against any future Israeli airstrike.

Earlier this month, Israel had struck near Damascus, targeting suspected shipments of advanced weapons purportedly intended for Hezbollah. Syria did not respond at the time.

Assad said he has informed other countries that Syria would respond next time. “If we are going to retaliate against Israel, this retaliation should be a strategic response,” he said.

Russia’s S-300 missiles would significantly boost Syria’s air defenses and are seen as a game-changer, but Assad was unclear whether Syria has received a first shipment.

Earlier Thursday, Al-Manar had sent text messages to reporters with what it said was an excerpt from the interview.

The station quoted Assad as saying Syria had received a first shipment of such missiles. The Associated Press called Al-Manar after receiving the text message, and an official at the station said the message had been sent based on Assad’s comments.

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s foreign minister laid out a hard line Wednesday, saying Bashar Assad will remain president at least until elections in 2014 and might seek another term, conditions that will make it difficult for the opposition to agree to U.N.-sponsored talks on ending the civil war.

Any deal reached in such talks would have to be put to a referendum, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem added in a TV interview, introducing a new condition that could complicate efforts by the U.S. and Russia to bring both sides together at an international conference in Geneva, possibly next month.

Drawing a tough line of its own, the main exile-based political group, the Syrian National Coalition, reiterated that any negotiations require “the head of the regime, security and military leadership to step down and be excluded from the political process.”

While the Assad regime has agreed in principle to attend peace talks, the opposition has not, insisting it first get international guarantees on the agenda and timetable. The coalition has been meeting for the past week in Turkey but spent most of that time arguing about membership issues, rather than making a decision about Geneva.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that while Russia and the United States have asked him to convene a meeting as soon as possible, “there are still many elements that we have to clear.” He said there is still no agreement on a date, on who will participate, and on the membership of a united opposition delegation.

In his wide-ranging comments, al-Moallem, an Assad stalwart with decades in top positions, reflected a new confidence by the government. The regime had seemed near collapse during a rebel offensive last summer but has scored a number of battlefield successes in recent weeks.

“Our armed forces have regained the momentum,” he told the Lebanese station Al-Mayadeen, suggesting that the regime is digging in. Asked when the civil war might end, he said: “That depends on when the patience of those conspiring against Syria will run out.”

The uprising against Assad began in March 2011, turned into an armed insurgency in response to a harsh regime crackdown, and escalated into a civil war. The fighting has killed more than 70,000 people, uprooted more than 5 million and devastated large areas of the country.