
BEIRUT - Islamist militants affiliated to al  Qaeda seized the last remaining stronghold of Western-backed rebels in  Syria's northwest province of Idlib on Saturday after days of fighting,  rebels and a monitoring group said.
Backed by other hardline  Islamist groups, the Nusra Front are waging a major military campaign  against the Syria Revolutionaries' Front led by Jamal Maarouf, a key  figure in the armed opposition to President Bashar Assad, after accusing  him of being corrupt and working for the West against them.
The  Nusra Front is al-Qaida's official affiliate in the Syrian civil war and  was once one of the strongest insurgent groups fighting to topple  Assad. But it has been overshadowed by the Islamic State, which has  seized swathes of northern and eastern Syria and is now being targeted  by US-led air strikes
In the past few days, the Nusra Front  captured several villages in the Jabal al-Zawiya region of Idlib  province and on Saturday it entered the village of Deir Sonbol, the  stronghold of the Revolutionaries' Front, forcing Maarouf to pull out.
"Dozens  of his fighters defected and joined Nusra, that is why the group won,"  Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told  Reuters.
A Nusra fighter confirmed the report, saying: "They left him because they knew he was wrong and delusional."
"He  left his fighters in the battle and pulled out. Last night, we heard  them on the radio shouting 'Abu Khaled (Maarouf) escaped, Abu Khaled  escaped'," he added.