Ahrar al-Sham

Syrian lands across from Turkey's Cilvegözü border gate is being controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has roots in al-Qaeda.

How did this happen?

A massive car bomb attack on a convoy carrying evacuees from besieged government-held towns in Syria killed at least 126 people, of them at least 68 chilren, and wounded hundreds, a monitor said on April 16.

The blast on April 15 tore through buses carrying residents from the northern towns of Fuaa and Kafraya as they waited at a transit point in rebel-held Rashidin, west of Aleppo.

The polarization of the long-divided fronts in the six-year-long war in Syria is continuing, as several armed factions decided to merge with the former al-Qaeda affiliate Jabet Fateh al-Sham. 

Russia has invited the U.S. to take part in the upcoming intra-Syrian talks in the Kazakh capital of Astana on Jan. 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Jan. 19. 

"The U.S. have already been invited," Lavrov told reporters in Moscow, according to state-run Anadolu Agency. 

Ankara contributed to the declaration of a recent 48-hour cease-fire among Syria's warring parties in a frontline area, Turkish officials have claimed.

"Turkey made an indirect contribution in providing the truce," sources from the Foreign Ministry told the Hürriyet Daily News on Aug. 12, noting that Ankara would continue any efforts for truce in Syria.

The US-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) hit a weapons depot belonging to a rebel group allied with Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate overnight in northwestern Syria, a monitor said on August 12.

At least 20 members of Syria's Druze minority have been killed in an unprecedented shoot-out with Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front in northwestern Syria, a monitor said on June 11.

Islamist rebels and the Syrian army fought fierce battles in Latakia province overnight close to President Bashar al-Assad's ancestral home, the army and rebels said, after weeks of insurgent gains in the country's northwest. 

A coalition of Islamist rebels said they seized a Syrian army base in northwestern Idlib province at dawn on April 27 after a suicide bomber from al Qaeda's Nusra Front drove a truck packed with explosives inside and set it off. 

Syrian state media said the army had inflicted heavy casualties on rebels in the area and launched air strikes, but did not say the base had fallen. 

The jihadist Islamic State group took control of the rebel-held half of the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor on Monday, buoyed by advances in neighbouring Iraq, a monitoring goup said.