Kurdish officials accuse Nusra Front of kidnapping 300 Kurds in Syria

While it was not immediately clear who exactly was responsible for the kidnapping, Kurdish officials accused al-Qaeda's affiliate al-Nusra Front, which is active in the northern Idlib province.

"A group of 300 people on five coaches and a mini-bus coming from Afrin were kidnapped at a checkpoint as they went to Aleppo to collect their salaries," said Newaf Khalil, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

The kidnapping was confirmed by a second official from the PYD, the main Kurdish party in Syria, and a journalist in Afrin, who said the women in the group had been freed but the men and children taken.

"There were 300 people on five buses, and they were kidnapped in Dana, which is under the control of Islamist factions and al-Nusra Front," said journalist Ali Abdul Rahman.

But while PYD officials accused Nusra of being behind the kidnapping, Abdul Rahman and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said it remained unclear who was behind the attack. 

The Observatory said the captors had demanded, through the released women, that three men arrested by authorities in Afrin be freed.

There was no immediate confirmation of those demands from PYD officials or residents of Afrin, which is under Kurdish control.

The kidnapping occurred in northwestern Idlib province, where al-Nusra and its allies wield considerable influence.

The al-Qaeda affiliate helped capture the provincial capital Idlib city on 28 March along with a coalition of other opposition groups.

The incident is not the first mass kidnapping in Syria, where large groups of Kurds and Christians have been held, mostly by the Islamic State group but also Nusra. 

IS fighters are accused of kidnapping over 200 Assyrian Christians from Hasakeh province, and last year held more than 150 Kurdish schoolchildren in Aleppo province.

Nusra, on the other hand, has been accused of holding journalists and aid workers and in 2013 kidnapped a group of 13 nuns who were later released in a prisoner exchange.

More than 215,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-regime protests that spiralled into a bloody civil war after a government crackdown.