Al-Qaeda militants besiege some areas in Aleppo

Al-Qaeda-linked fighters have besieged some areas in the northwestern Syrian province of Aleppo and are readying to storm the village of al-Atareb nearby, Al Arabiya News Channel reported activists as saying on Friday.

The activists also reported that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have attacked a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the city of Latakia, detaining its entire staff body.

There are five foreign doctors who work in the hospital, according to activists.

The monitoring opposition group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said at least 49 people were killed after Syrian forces shelled several cities and towns in Homs, Aleppo, Daraa and the capital, Damascus on Thursday.

Meanwhile, sources in the Syrian Islamic Front, a merger of seven Islamist rebel groups, described a statement by ISIL authorizing the killing of its fighters and the Free Syrian Army as “fabricated,” Al Arabiya News Channel reported on Thursday.

In its alleged statement, ISIL had threatened the al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al-Islam or Army of Islam and the FSA with revenge and death.

In an interview with Al Arabiya News Channel, Sheikh Marwan al-Qadiri, assistant secretary-general of the Syrian Scholars Association, said that the ISIL’s alleged statement is “unreliable,” stressing that if the statement was proven to be true, it would be a grave mistake.

Al-Qadiri said legitimizing the killing of an entire group is “illogical,” and “illegal.”

He also urged ISIL to be more logical in its publically declared statements.

In a show of further splintering between opposition groups, the main group, the Syrian National Coalition, accused ISIL of “serving” President Bashar al-Assad’s interests, and hijacking the uprising that has killed more than 130,000, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.