Al Qaeda In A Bid To End bloody Fighting Among Rebel

Al Qaeda has split with a Syrian militant group in an apparent bid to end bloody in-fighting among rebel forces in the country's civil war and focus efforts on unseating President Bashar al Assad.

The move by the terror network to break off relations with the increasingly independent Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), will be seen as an attempt by the organisation to reassert authority over the warring Islamist factions.

The step is set to bolster the Nusra Front, a rival group, as al Qaeda's official affiliate in Syria.
It comes as the three-year conflict remains largely deadlocked, with Syria divided into areas controlled by different groups.
The ISIL has been battling other Islamist insurgents and secular rebel groups, often in disputes over authority and territory.

Several opposition groups announced a campaign against the ISIL last month.
Internal warfare - some of the bloodiest seen in the conflict so far - has undermined the uprising against Mr Assad and dismayed Western powers pushing for a peace deal.
Rebel-on-rebel violence in Syria has killed at least 2,300 this year alone, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

ISIL had followed al Qaeda's hardline ideology and, until now, the two groups were officially linked.
But hardline Islamist rebels, including Nusra, have come to dominate the insurgency against the Assad regime
In a message on jihadi websites on Monday, the al Qaeda general command said ISIL "is not a branch of the al Qaeda group".
It said al Qaeda "does not have an organisational relationship with it and is not the group responsible for their actions".
Experts see the statement as an attempt by al Qaeda to reassert some authority over the Islamist fighters.

But ISIL is a potent force and recently demonstrated its strength by freeing more than 400 people from a prison in northern Syria held by a rival Islamist group, and also wrestling control of one of the largest gas fields in Syria.
ISIL and its Iraqi predecessor have been a source of controversy among Islamists for many years because of its imposition of harsh punishments based on a hardline interpretation of Islamic law, and staging attacks that led to heavy civilian death tolls.

Sky news