BEIRUT: Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch staged four suicide bomb attacks on army positions Sunday, leaving dozens of casualties, in a bid to cut off Idlib province from the coast, a monitoring group said.

The attacks came a day after the Al-Nusra Front announced the creation of an arms factory.

“Four Al-Nusra Front fighters carried out suicide attacks this morning, driving vehicles packed with explosives into four regime forces’ checkpoints in the Jabal Al-Arbaeen area near Ariha city,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based group said that dozens of troops were killed or wounded, without giving specific figures. Fierce fighting broke out in the area, pitting army troops backed by pro-regime militia against rebels and jihadis, said the Observatory.

The air force also struck the area, killing two rebels and wounding another 15, it added.

The army controls the cities of Idlib and Ariha in Idlib province of northwest Syria, but much of the countryside is under rebel control.

Ariha lies on the road from Idlib to Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, the heartland of President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The rebels are “determined to cut off the road before the presidential vote” on June 3 that is to be contested only in regime-controlled areas, according to the Observatory.

“In a bid to create a full-scale military industry... Al-Nusra Front has established the Bas (courage) institution for military production and development, the first fully jihadis project of development and fabrication of effective weaponry.”

Meanwhile, Lebanese security forces arrested an influential Syrian-born cleric on Sunday who went into hiding last month after a crackdown in the northern city of Tripoli to end sectarian violence fueled by civil war in neighboring Syria.

Omar Bakri, who praised Al-Qaeda in recent speeches, founded outlawed British group Al-Muhajiroun and was banished from Britain to Lebanon in 2005. He sought refuge in the mainly Sunni city of Tripoli where he was popular.

“In the early hours of the morning we have arrested Omar Bakri from where he was hiding in Aley,” Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said at a conference. “This person has contributed in every aspect in supporting terrorism.”