AFP

Damascus

Islamists fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad forged Syria’s largest rebel alliance and pledged to work towards an Islamic state yesterday, as rebels seized a town on the Lebanese border.

The merger of the six Islamist groups comes after repeated calls for unity from opposition fighters and their foreign backers, following advances by regime forces around Syria’s main cities of Damascus and Aleppo.

“The ‘Islamic Front’ is an independent military and social force that is aimed at bringing down Assad’s regime in Syria and at replacing it with a just Islamic state,” the alliance said in a statement.

The announcement came after a rebel spokesman, Abu Firas, declared “the complete merger of the major military factions fighting in Syria”.

Speaking to AFP via the Internet from the northern province of Aleppo, Abu Firas said the new front bringing together tens of thousands of rebels would have “one policy and one military command”.

Among those in the Islamic Front are Aleppo’s biggest fighting force Liwa al-Tawhid, the Salafist Ahrar al-Sham and the Army of Islam, which is concentrated around Damascus.

Creation of the new joint force followed criticism from opposition sources and experts partly attributing the recent rebel battleground losses to disunity.

But it threatens to undermine the foreign-based leadership of the mainstream Free Syrian Army, which has gradually lost credibility over its inability to secure weapons demanded by rebels on the ground.

Aron Lund, an expert on the 32-month conflict in Syria, described as significant the amalgamation of mainstream and hardline Islamists, excluding any Al Qaeda factions.

“It’s something that could be very important if it holds up,” Lund said.

The Islamic Front’s formation was a response to both regime advances and the “aggressive posture” of jihadists against other rebels, he said, adding: “I assume there’s a good deal of foreign involvement as well.”

The announcement came days after the death of Liwa al-Tawhid’s charismatic military chief Abdel Qader Saleh, who had reportedly called for unity.

Abu Firas said “the doors are open to all the military factions, and a committee is working to study the entrance of all groups that also want to join” the Front.

“It has been decided that all the factions’ military, media, humanitarian and administrative offices will merge over a transitional period of three months.”

News of the merger came as anti-Assad protesters in Syria took to the streets for weekly demonstrations, this time under the rallying cry “The blood of the martyr (Saleh) unites us”.

Saleh died from his wounds on Monday, after an air strike on a building in Aleppo where he and other faction leaders had been meeting.

Activists welcomed the merger as “bad news” both for Assad and the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has fought against some rebel brigades in opposition-held areas, including Islamists.

“The news will terrorise the regime and ISIL at the same time,” said one activist group.

Expert Thomas Pierret said the Front, “which brings together way more than 50,000 fighters, will dominate the insurgency”.

“If this front succeeds, it will almost inevitably enter into conflict with ISIL,” he predicted.

On the ground, rebels including jihadists seized the town of Deir Attiya on the Lebanese border, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The majority Christian town in the Qalamoun area north of Damascus is home to 10,000 people and is on the strategic route linking the capital to Homs in central Syria.

It was seized by ISIL and Al Nusra Front, as well as other Islamists, said the Observatory.

The rebel advance comes three days after the army took nearby Qara, which had for many months been under opposition control.

Regime warplanes yesterday staged 16 air strikes on Qalamoun, the Observatory said.

More than 120,000 people have died in Syria’s brutal war, which erupted after Assad’s regime launched a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests, sparking a brutal insurgency.