ISTANBUL // The United States has suspended all non-lethal assistance into northern Syria after Islamic Front forces seized headquarters and warehouses belonging to the opposition’s Supreme Military Council (SMC), a US Embassy spokesman in Ankara said.
Fighters from the Islamic Front, a newly formed union of six major rebel groups, took control of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) bases at the Bab Al Hawa crossing on Syria’s northwestern border with Turkey on Friday.
Turkey shut its side of the border crossing, in Hatay province, due to a reported increase in clashes on the Syrian side, according to customs sources. There was no immediate confirmation from Turkish officials.
Infighting among Syrian rebels has weakened their efforts to bring down President Bashar Al Assad in a conflict which began as peaceful protests against his rule in March 2011 and has since descended into civil war backed by regional powers.
It was unclear why the Islamic Front had seized the SMC premises and it was not known if any stock had gone missing.
“Because of the current situation the United States has suspended deliveries of nonlethal assistance into northern Syria,” US embassy spokesman T.J. Grubisha said.
Humanitarian assistance was not affected because it is distributed through international and non-governmental organisations.
The situation was being investigated “to inventory the status of US equipment and supplies provided to the SMC,” Mr Grubisha said.
The US president, Barack Obama, has been hesitant to provide arms or large amounts of non-lethal assistance to rebel forces in Syria out of fear that it could fall into the hands of radicals.
In another instance of Al Qaeda linked militants trying to underline rivals in the opposition movement, masked gunmen abducted a leading Syrian human rights lawyer and three other prominent activists in a rebel-held Damascus suburb.
Razan Zaytouni, one of the most outspoken critics of the Al Assad regime as well as radical militants within the opposition was seized on Tuesday along with her husband and two other colleagues from her office in Douma.
No group claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, but Ms Zaytouni herself had publicly blamed Al Qaeda linked rebels for kidnapping activists. Colleagues said she had received indirect threats from extremists in recent days.
One of the few well-known opposition activists to remain in the country throughout the 3-year-old conflict, Ms Zaytouni published an article earlier this month on a Lebanese website in which she blamed Al Qaeda-linked fighters for more than 90 per cent of the kidnappings carried out in recent weeks in rebel-held areas.
The group is “continuing the role that the Syrian regime started in liquidating activists and pushing those who remain to exile,” she wrote.
Ms Zaytouni stayed in the country but was forced to go into hiding shortly after the revolt against Mr Al Assad began in March 2011.
Ms Zaytouni was also general coordinator of the Violations Documentation Center in Syria, which keeps track of the casualties of the Syrian conflict and has recorded atrocities committed by both sides of the conflict.
The other three activists seized were Ms Zaytouni’s husband – prominent activist and former political prisoner Wael Hamadeh – activist and lawyer Nazem Hamadi, and Samira Khalil, the wife of prominent Syrian opposition figure Yasin Haj Saleh, who recently fled Syria to Turkey.
“The arrest of Samira, Razan, Wael and Nazem is an insult to the Syrian revolution,” Mr Saleh posted on his Facebook page.
With just about a month to go before the start of internationally brokered peace talks to end the civil war, Mr Al Assad’s forces have stepped up a punishing offensive against rebels in a mountainous region near the border with Lebanon.
The government has gained momentum after agreeing to surrender its chemical weapons stocks to avert threatened US air strikes.
The January 22 peace conference to be held in Switzerland would be the first face-to-face talks between Mr Al Assad’s regime and its opponents since the conflict began.
* Agencies
