Nusra withdraws from frontlines with IS in buffer zone

The Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front has ceded frontline positions against IS to other rebel factions in an area of northern Syria where Turkey hopes to establish a buffer zone, Reuters reported on Monday.

A Nusra Front statement dated Sunday criticised a Turkish-US plan to drive IS from the Syrian-Turkish border area, saying the aim was to serve "Turkey's national security" rather than to fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"Facing this current scene, our only option was to withdraw and leave our frontline positions in the northern Aleppo countryside for any fighting faction in these areas to take over," Nusra said.

Syrian rebels taking part in the US-Turkish plan as ground forces were not doing so voluntarily, it added.

The US and Turkey announced last month plans to create an IS-free buffer zone in northern Syria near the Turkish border in a campaign that would provide air cover for Syrian rebels in the area.

The planned buffer would prevent a powerful Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, from further expanding a zone of control that already stretches some 400 km along the Syrian-Turkish border. Backed by US-led airstrikes, the YPG has seized wide areas of territory from IS this year.

While Nusra is an enemy of IS, its foothold in northern Syria has been a problem for the US-led campaign against IS. Earlier this month, Nusra captured Syrian US-trained rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), calling them agents of US interests.

Nusra said Turkey was acting to prevent the formation of a Kurdish state in northern Syria, and the Turkish government and the US-led alliance against IS were seeking to direct the battle according to their priorities.

They group however said it would maintain frontlines with IS in other areas including Hama province and the Qalamoun mountain range at the border with Lebanon.

Nusra had handed over two villages north of Aleppo to an alliance of rebel groups operating in the area known as Jabhat al-Shamiya, or the Levant Front, sources told Reuters.

Nusra is one of the most powerful groups fighting in the four-year-long Syrian war that has estimated to have killed a quarter of a million people and largely reduced Assad's control to the cities of western Syria.

It has been a major force behind advances in northwestern Syria this year. Insurgent groups including Nusra escalated an attack on some of the last government-controlled areas in the northwestern province of Idlib province on Monday, reported Reuters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that tracks the war using sources on the ground, reported heavy fighting between rebels including Nusra, and pro-government forces it said were led by Lebanon's Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shia group fighting alongside the Syrian army.

Rebels are also pressing a separate offensive in Sahl al-Ghab, an agricultural plain of vital strategic importance to Assad because of its proximity to the city of Hama and the coastal mountains that are home to his Alawite sect.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory, said insurgents now controlled around half of Sahl al-Ghab, reported Reuters.