REPORT: Syrian rebels behead Muslim cleric in Aleppo

                     
Activists reported on Saturday that rebels have seized a strategic neighborhood in the city of Aleppo after days of wide-spread and violent clashes.                 

In this context, Syrian rebels beheaded a pro-government Sunni Muslim cleric, Hassan Seifeddine, and paraded his body in the neighborhood, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.                         

Syrian rebels on Friday captured a strategic town near the border with Jordan, after fierce clashes that killed at least 38 people, activists said.          

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 16 rebels were among the dead in the fighting in and around Dael, which burst out on Thursday.          

The town lies in the south of the country, less than 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the Jordanian border in Daraa province, where the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime began two years ago.        

Amateur video footage uploaded to YouTube by activists on Friday purported to show heavy fighting between rebels and regime forces the previous day, in which rebels celebrated the taking of a checkpoint.         

The Syrian conflict began as peaceful protests that turned violent when Syrian President Bachar Assad tried to quash the revolt. The United Nations says more than 70,000 people have been killed and around 1.2 million have fled the long-simmering violence taking place in the country.                        

Positions:            

The New York Times reported that the rebel seizure of the town of Dael is another setback for the Syrian regime, noting that it would pave the way for smuggling of weapons as well as other kinds of assistance to the rebels.            

For his part, Iran's permanent representative to the UN Mohammad Khazai slammed the attempts of some States to give a seat to the Syrian opposition in the United Nations, and pointed out that “it is a dangerous procedure” that could take a toll on the same Sates.         

On another note, a high-ranking Iraqi official said that his country will take airtight measures in regards to the Iranian flights moving through its airspace toward Syria, days after the US Secretary of State John Kerry has accused Iraq of turning a blind eye to the flights.          

As for the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's media adviser Ali al-Moussawi, he said that Iraq would undertake more random searches on the border in order to check for weapons provided to Syrian insurgents.


LBCI/AP

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