BEIRUT: A rogue Iraqi offshoot of Al-Qaeda is now killing more rival Al-Qaeda fighters every week in Syria than President Bashar Assad’s forces as infighting intensifies among opposition gunmen.

Clashes this year between Al-Qaeda’s official Syria wing, the Nusra Front, and the franchise’s disowned offspring, The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), have killed hundreds of fighters and displaced tens of thousands of civilians.

Nusra lost control of Raqqa — the only rebel-held city in Syria — to ISIL fighters in January and intense fighting over the weekend resulted in ISIL making gains in the eastern province of Deir El-Zor, Syria’s oil region.

If ISIL can take the province, it will control territory across Syria and into Iraq.

Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, has repeatedly tried to rein in ISIL and this month he appealed to the group to return to Iraq and redouble its efforts there as sectarian fighting rages. But on Sunday, ISIL’s spokesman, Abu Mohammed Al-Adnani, released an audio message rejecting the request.

“About your demand for us to withdraw from Syria, this will not happen and we repeat that this order is impossible,” he said.

In Deir Al-Zor city, civilians who lived through two years of fighting between opposition fighters and the government are now fleeing clashes between ISIL and the Nusra Front.

Some 230 militants have been killed over the past two weeks in the infighting, which also takes place in Deir Al-Zor’s oil fields, the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.