Spanish journalist, photographer kidnapped in Syria

Fighters linked to al Qaeda abducted a Spanish journalist and a photographer in a rebel-held eastern Syrian city in September, El Mundo newspaper reported on Tuesday.
   
Journalist Javier Espinosa and photographer Ricardo Garcia were taken by rebel group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on September 16 at a checkpoint in Raqqa, which fell to militant Islamist brigades in March, the paper reported.
   
Espinosa, a journalist for the newspaper, and freelance photographer Garcia were just a few kilometers from the border with Turkey and were trying to leave Syria at the time.
   
The incident had not been reported until now because of negotiations with the rebels holding the men, the newspaper said.
   
The kidnappers have not said what they want in exchange for the men and El Mundo did not say why it had decided to announce the kidnappings now.
   
The pair are veteran journalists who have covered the Syrian conflict since its beginning and have traveled to the region around ten times.
 
UN aid to Syria via Iraq:

The United Nations is launching its first airlift of food and other aid supplies from Iraq to the Kurdistan region of northern Syria this week with permission from both governments, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday.
   
The airbridge using commercial cargo Ilyushin 76 planes to Hassakeh, Syria, from Erbil, Iraq, will begin on Thursday and up to 12 flights are scheduled through Sunday, Amin Awad, director of the Middle East and North Africa Bureau of the UNHCR said.
  
"This is the first time aid goes through Iraq," Awad told Reuters in Geneva. "The number of vulnerable in al Hassakeh is estimated at 50,000-60,000 but we are still doing assessments. Al Hassakeh has been out of reach for a long time."


On the field:

Syrian activists say that fighters belonging to rival Islamic rebel groups are battling each other in the north and at least 12 have died.
    
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says members of the al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and another Islamic group clashed in the town of Maskaneh in the northern Aleppo province.

Fighting started Tuesday morning after ISIL members detained a man to try him in an Islamic court they set up after driving President Bashar Assad's forces from the area.
     
Over the past year, the ISIL has become one of the most influential groups on the opposition's side in the country's nearly three-year-old conflict. The infighting has weakening the battle to oust Assad.

 
REUTERS/AP