DHAKA: Fighting between Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch and a splinter group in eastern Syria has forced more than 60,000 people to flee their homes, emptied villages and killed scores of fighters.

A monitoring group said, reports The Straits Times.

Infighting among rebels opposed to president Bashar al-Assad has undermined the three-year-old uprising against his rule and killed thousands of people since the start of the year.

The conflict has pitted hardline Islamists against more moderate insurgents, but disputes over turf and resources have also turned radical factions against one another, most recently in the oil-producing eastern province of Deir al-Zor.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said late on Saturday that al Qaeda’s Syrian wing, the Nusra Front, had taken over control of the town of Abreeha from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a former al Qaeda affiliate formally disowned by the group this year.

BDST: 1715 HRS, MAY 04, 2014