BEIRUT: Syrian rebels said Friday the assassination of one of their top commanders by Al-Qaeda-linked militants was tantamount to a declaration of war, opening a new front for the Western-backed fighters struggling against President Bashar Assad's forces.
Rivalries have been growing between the Free Syrian Army and the Islamists, whose smaller but more effective forces control most of the rebel-held parts of northern Syria more than two years after pro-democracy protests became an uprising.
"We will not let them get away with it because they want to target us," a senior FSA commander said on condition of anonymity after members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria killed Kamal Hamami Thursday.
"We are going to wipe the floor with them," he said.
Hamami, also known by his nom de guerre, Abu Bassir al-Ladkani, was one of the top 30 figures on the FSA's Supreme Military Command.
His killing highlights how the West's vision of a future, democratic Syria is unraveling and underlines a deepening power struggle between moderate and extremist groups fighting in the civil war.
There remained contradictory accounts over the manner of Hamami's death late Thursday.
A rebel allied with Abu Bassir said via Facebook he had witnessed what he described as a cold-blooded shooting at an ISIS checkpoint when the rebel chief was on his way to visit fellow fighters at the front.
"They told us we weren't allowed to cross, that they had orders from their emir, Abu Ayman," who heads ISIS in Latakia, said the witness, Abu Ahmad, who defected from the ranks of Syria's army to join the rebels.
"Abu Bassir told them: 'Did you come to our country to help us or to be a burden?' Abu Ayman then arrived at the scene. He said he would kill Abu Bassir, who replied: 'You have nothing to do with Islam.' Abu Ayman then killed him," he said.
An activist group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, gave a different version of events, saying Abu Bassir was killed when ISIS fighters tried to destroy an FSA checkpoint in the Jabal al-Turkman region, in the north of Latakia province.
"FSA rebels fired into the air, and subsequently, an ISIS fighter shot Abu Bassir dead and wounded two other fighters from his battalion," said the Observatory, which relies on a broad network of activists.
Louay Mekdad, FSA Supreme Command political coordinator, said Abu Ayman al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State's emir of the coastal region, personally shot dead Hamami and his brother at the roadblock.
"If these people came to defend the Syrian revolution and not help the Assad regime, then they have to hand over the killers," Mekdad said, adding that the bodies of the two men were still with the Al-Qaeda affiliate.
AFP journalists met with Abu Bassir twice earlier this year.
The young commander, in his 30s, hailed from a wealthy family from the city of Latakia, but chose to join the rebellion in the province's mountains.
"They [jihadists] have left their homes, their countries to come fight our war. But this is our country and we don't want outsiders to come and rule over it. They must realize that they have to leave once the war ends," Abu Bassir told AFP in May.
Highly organized and respected by members of his Ezz Bin Abdel-Salam Battalion, Abu Bassir "was a moderate and believed in the idea of a democratic state," one of his friends, who would be identified only as Aboud, told AFP via the Internet.
"During the liberation of the Christian village of Burj al-Kassab, a jihadist destroyed a cross. A fight broke out between Abu Bassir and the jihadists over this incident," he added.
Residents of Latakia province "are very angry" over the assassination, said Aboud, adding that "the regime [of President Bashar Assad] has tried for two years to kill Abu Bassir. And now these people come and kill him."
The two anti-Assad groups have previously fought together from time to time, but the Western and Arab-backed FSA, desperate for greater firepower, has recently tried to distance itself to allay U.S. fears that any arms it might supply could reach Al-Qaeda.
With funding from Gulf-based individuals, Islamist brigades have taken a leading role in rebel-held regions of Syria, filling the vacuum of power by setting up religious courts and governance bodies.
The FSA – a mixture of loosely affiliated brigades – is accused by locals of looting and has not been able to present a unified front to sideline hard-line units who favor an Islamic caliphate over pluralist democracy.
Some frustrated FSA fighters say they have joined Islamist groups and moderate and hard-line fighters sometimes buy and sell arms to each other.
The Observatory said the FSA and the Islamic State have had violent exchanges in several areas of Syria over the past few weeks, showing growing antagonism between Assad's foes.
"Last Friday, the Islamic State killed an FSA rebel in Idlib province and cut his head off. There have been attacks in many provinces," the Observatory's leader Rami Abdel-Rahman said.
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