Rebels say they have begun a new battle in north-western Syria in response to alleged truce violations by the army.
A
statement announced the formation of a joint operations room following
what it said was an increase in attacks on residential areas and
displaced people.Rebels were said to have subsequently launched attacks in the province of Latakia and in neighbouring Hama.
The rebels also urged opposition negotiators in Geneva to take a tougher stand at UN-led peace talks.
The cessation of hostilities brokered by the US and Russia to make way for the talks has resulted in a significant reduction in violence since it took effect on 27 February.
But escalating fighting in recent days, particularly around the divided northern city of Aleppo, has left it on the verge of collapse.
Violence has also spilled over into Turkey. One person was killed and another wounded when four rockets hit the south-eastern town of Kilis, which is across the border from an area of Syria controlled by the so-called Islamic State (IS). The town has been fired on previously.
Separately, Turkey's Dogan news agency reported that the Turkish military had fired artillery into Syria after a mortar landed near an army outpost in Hatay province.
Rebels launch assaults
"After the increase of violations by regime forces that included targeting displaced people and continuous bombing of residential neighbourhoods, we declare the start of the battle in response," said the rebel statement issued on Monday morning.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that rebels had launched an assault on the positions of government forces and their allies in Latakia's northern countryside early on Monday and by midday had made advances.
The UK-based monitoring group also said rebels were close to taking over the town of Khirbat al-Naqus, in the strategically important Sahl al-Ghab plain in the north-west of Hama province.
A Syrian military source confirmed the attacks, according to the Reuters news agency.
Latakia is the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect, and the Sahl al-Ghab lies just to the east of the coastal mountains where Mr Assad's ancestral village of Qardaha is located.
Twenty-two civilians were killed over the weekend in Aleppo, with at least 16 dying as a result of rebel shell- and sniper-fire and the six others dying in government air strikes, according to the group.
Peace talks warning
In Geneva, the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) threatened to pull out of the UN-led indirect peace talks with the government because little progress was being made on any of the main issues, including the future of President Assad."We might suspend [our participation in] the talks if things carry on this way, and then there will be no prospect for any political solution," HNC member Abdul Hakim Bashar told the AFP news agency.
Militants from Islamic State (IS), which along with the rival jihadist group al-Nusra Front is excluded from the cessation of hostilities, have meanwhile seized more territory from rebel groups near the Turkish border north of Aleppo, forcing some 35,000 civilians to flee towards the opposition-held town of Azaz.
Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Monday that the situation was now critical for more than 100,000 displaced people trapped around Azaz, with active fighting just 7km (four miles) away and the border closed for all but the most seriously ill Syrians.
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