Members of al Qaeda wing Nusra Front and other Sunni Islamist battalions seized an area south of a Shi'ite Muslim village in northern Syria on Sunday after deadly clashes with pro-government fighters, a group monitoring the war said.
The fighters advanced overnight on al-Zahra, north of Aleppo city, seizing territory to the south and also trying to take land to the east in an attempt to capture the village, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.