Jihadists Fighting Back in North Syria

Jihadists battling rebels in northern Syria fought Thursday to recover lost turf nearly a week after a new front opened in the conflict gripping the country.

The fighting comes a day after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was expelled from Aleppo city by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

Meanwhile, a massive car bomb blast in the central province of Hama killed at least 18 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Thursday's violence comes nearly a week after rebels launched an all-out attack on ISIL, and almost three years into a war that broke out after Assad's regime launched a brutal crackdown against dissent.

While jihadists were initially welcomed by rebels battling Assad's forces, ISIL became hated because of its systematic abuses and its bid to dominate areas that had fallen out of regime control.

In a counterattack, ISIL launched car bomb assaults late Wednesday against rival rebel checkpoints, the Observatory said.

"At least nine people were killed in a car bomb attack by ISIL on a rebel checkpoint... in al-Bab town" in Aleppo province, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse.

He said similar attacks took place in Hreitan and Jarabulus in Aleppo province, and in Mayadeen in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

The attacks came after rebels overran ISIL's Aleppo headquarters on Wednesday, as claims emerged that the group had massacred prisoners there.

In Raqa city, fighting raged near the governorate building, which ISIL has for several months used as its headquarters.

While the rebels in Raqa city appeared to be advancing, ISIL was fighting back in the countryside, especially in the border town of Tal Abyad, from which they were expelled earlier this week.

ISIL is believed to be holding hundreds of activists, rival rebels and foreigners including journalists at several bases in Raqa province.

In less than a week, hundreds of fighters on both sides and scores of civilians have been killed.

Activists say Raqa has become "a city of ghosts", with bodies in the streets and people afraid to leave their houses because of the violence.

The fighting has not stopped the main conflict between opposition fighters and the regime.

At least 18 people, among them women and children, were killed in the huge car bombing in Kafat in central Hama province on Thursday, the Observatory said.

Much of the province, including Kafat, is still under regime control, and state television reported the "terrorist" blast, saying 16 people were dead and tens more wounded.

In Aleppo, loyalist warplanes carried out a new air strike on the rebel-held district of Sheikh Maqsud.

A brutal aerial offensive by the regime against Aleppo that started on December 15 has killed hundreds of people, mostly civilians.

In southern Damascus, troops fired rockets at Yarmuk, a Palestinian camp that has been under siege for a year, the Observatory said.

Some 20,000 of its pre-war 170,000 population are trapped with little food and medicine, and reports say 15 people have died from hunger in the camp since September.

On Thursday, the spokesman for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA described "profound civilian suffering" in the camp.

Chris Gunness said there was "widespread malnutrition" and reports of women dying in childbirth for lack of medical aid.

He urged the Syrian regime and other parties to allow aid into the camp, which is controlled by armed opposition fighters and under a tight Syrian army siege.

Syrian state television meanwhile said an aid convoy carrying 5,000 food parcels had been blocked from entering Yarmuk by "terrorist gangs" who opened fire.

The violence comes less than two weeks away from a slated peace conference in Switzerland.

The fractious opposition National Coalition has postponed a final decision on whether to attend the January 22 talks, but members said Thursday they face international pressure to participate.

"There have been clear signs indicating the Coalition must go to Geneva," said Coalition member Samir Nashar.

But he warned that the Coalition's legitimacy was at stake, amid widespread opposition towards the talks.

"The entire revolutionary movement in Syria is against Geneva," he told Agence France Presse.