Syria crisis: Al-Nusra Front ‘seizes US-backed rebels’

But the United States and Turkey have not yet agreed which Syrian rebels they will support in the effort.

The rival insurgents clashed again Friday in the northern Syrian town of Azaz, near the Turkish border at Kilis, a Syrian rights group said. The source said the group had appealed by peaceful means for the men’s release.

The incident came days after the U.S. and Turkey announced the outlines of a deal to help rebels push IS back from the Syrian-Turkish border.

The fighters, who were attacked by al-Nusra Front militants at their headquarters on Friday morning, are among the 50-60 rebels trained in Turkey to fight Islamic State.

Another rebel group in the area said it had also clashed with Nusra Front in Azaz.

A Division 30 official said reports that the group was Western-backed were likely the reason for the kidnapping. Eight of them, including a commander, were kidnapped on Thursday by Al-Nusra in a village in Aleppo province, the Observatory said.

The statement also cited the strikes on its headquarters, which it said comprised more than ten rockets and left a number of dead and wounded, as proof of the collusion between Division 30 and the West.

Saleh al-Hamawi, a founding al-Nusra member recently expelled from the group for speaking out of turn on policy issues, has warned that the group could be now be subject to further attack by the US warplanes bombing Syria.

The group has targeted rebel groups with close ties to the Americans in the past, including crushing a U.S.-equipped brigade, Harakat Hazem, last year as well as defeating the mostly secular Syrian Revolutionary Front.

But such a resolution is unlikely to materialise, with Nusra escalating its targeting of US-trained rebels and the American-led coalition against Isis continuing to target Nusra.

The Obama administration has long struggled to find partners on the ground in Syria to work with in its war against the IS group. 13 fighters were killed on both sides, says the Syrian Observatory. Hassan said some fighters threatened to quit because he wasn’t able to pay them properly, and that U.S. officials still hadn’t provided his men with night-vision goggles. Islamic State’s insurgents have been targeting strongholds of Nusra and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the northern countryside of Aleppo with suicide attacks since months. The Pentagon has said however that no members of the “New Syrian Force” had been captured or detained.