AMMAN, Jordan - Government troops fired mortar rounds that slammed into a main market in a town in northern Syria on Sunday, killing at least 20 civilians, activist groups said.
The mortar shells struck the town of Ariha, which is held mostly by opposition fighters, a few hours ahead of iftar, the meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees, two opposition groups tracking the violence in Syria, said at least 20 people were killed, including two children and two women. It was not immediately clear what triggered the shelling.
Also Sunday, state media said government forces killed nearly 50 rebels in an ambush near Damascus.
Separately, Kurdish rebels freed the local commander of an al-Qaida-linked group in a town near Syria’s northern border with Turkey in return for 300 Kurdish civilians detained by the group, as part of an agreement to end rebel infighting that broke out a day earlier in the region.
Infighting between al-Qaida militants and more mainstream Syrian rebels, as well as between Kurds and Arabs, has grown more common in Syria in recent weeks - partof a power struggle that is undermining their efforts to topple President Bashar Assad.
Kurdish gunmen have been fighting to expel al-Qaida militants - many of whom are foreign fighters - from the northeastern province of Hassakeh over the past week. More than 60 fighters have been killed from both sides, according to activists.
Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in Syria, make up more than 10 percent of the country’s 23 million people. Their loyalties in the conflict are split between the two sides. Most Kurds live in the poor northeastern regions of Hassakeh and Qamishli, wedged in between the borders of Turkey and Iraq. Damascus and Aleppo also have several predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods.
On Saturday evening, the fighting spread to Tal Abyad, which is located in neighboring Raqqa province near the Turkish border.
The inter-rebel clashes, along with the efforts by extremist foreign fighters to impose their strict interpretation of Islam in areas they control, are chipping away at the opposition’s popularity at a time when the Assad regime is making significant advances on the ground.
In recent weeks, Assad’s troops have seized the momentum in the civil war, now in its third year. His forces have been on the offensive against rebels on several fronts, including in the north.
More than 93,000 people have been killed since the Syrian uprising started in March 2011, according to the United Nations. It escalated into a civil war after opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown.
The U.S. military intelligence agency warned President Barack Obama’s administration early in the Syrian uprising that Assad would be able to hold onto power for years even in the face of widespread opposition, the deputy head of the Defense Intelligence Agency said.
The agency predicted Assad would remain in power until at least the start of 2013, a classified assessment more pessimistic than the early public statements by administration officials.
David Shedd, No. 2 in the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Saturday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado that the Syrian civil war is now likely to continue for years, whatever Assad’s fate. The country faces the prospect of “unfathomable violence” and growing power there by Islamic radicals,including those allied with al-Qaida, he said.
“My concern is that it can go on for a long time, as in many, many months to multiple years,” he said. “And the civilian casualties, the enormous flow of refugees and the dislocation and so forth and the human suffering associated with it will only increase in time.”
Also Sunday, activists reported rare fighting between rebels and regime forces in the coastal province of Tartus, a stronghold of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
The Observatory accused the regime of killing 13 members of the same family, including four women and six children, in an attack in the Sunni Muslim village of Bayda following the clashes.The village is predominantly Sunni but is located in the Alawite ancestral heartland. It was the site of a mass killing in May.
Meanwhile, Syrian state television claimed that a pro-government group hacked into two social messaging networks and seized records of local users.
That could expose Syrian rebels and other activists who depend on the networks to publicize army crackdowns on their hometowns and communicate with each other. Many telephone landlines and cellphones in Syria are assumed to be tapped.
In related news, the leader of a restive province in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains says local Islamic militants are fighting alongside rebels in Syria and could further destabilize their home region when they return.
Ramazan Abdulatipov, the acting president of the province of Dagestan, said in remarks posted on his website Sunday that the “export of extremists” should be prevented by making it hard for militants to leave Russia.
“These people go there, and they will come back tomorrow with the backing of international extremist and terrorist organizations,” Abdulatipov said during a meeting with local officials Friday.
Andrei Konin, the head of the regional branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, told the meeting that about 200 residents of Dagestan are currently in Syria, and some of them are fighting alongside rebels.
Konin said many people from Dagestan go to Syria for studies but end up in rebel ranks to join what they consider a holy war.
Russia has been the key ally of Assad, protecting him from the U.N. sanctions and providing him with weapons in the civil war.
Information for this article was contributed by Jamal Halaby, Zeina Karam, Malin Rising and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Terry Atlas of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 07/22/2013