DHAKA: Kurdish militants seized a Syrian border post on the frontier with Iraq early on Saturday, a monitoring group said, after three days of clashes with an al-Qaida-linked group which had held the crossing for more than a year.

The Yarubiya post and surrounding areas in the northeast were taken from the Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant rebel group, who had seized it from the army.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, reports The Jerusalem Post.

Ethnic Kurds in Syria have a complex role in nearly three years of conflict that started when president Bashar Assad cracked down on a pro-democracy uprising.

The ensuing war has pitted Sunni Muslims against Assad’s Alawite minority and different Kurdish militia have fought for both sides, normally over territory or power disputes.

BDST: 1810 HRS, OCT 26, 2013
RoR/SRS