Syrian army stresses need to root out insurgency

DAMASCUS - The Syrian army said Sunday the armed groups in Syria have gone so far in their flagrant violations to the cease-fire, adding that it has become incumbent upon the army to strike those "terrorist groups" with an iron fist to root them out of the country.

In a statement carried by the state-run SANA news agency, the general command of the Syrian army recounted the armed rebels' alleged violations to the cease-fire truce for the third straight day.

It said the armed groups blasted earlier on Sunday an oil pipeline in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, adding that they have attacked many checkpoints over the past 24 hours.

The cease-fire truce has been put forward by the UN-Arab League special representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, who pushed the conflicting parties in Syria to observe a truce during the four- day holiday of Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha.

The feast holiday started Friday and the violence hasn't ebbed yet with each party blaming the other over the faltering truce.

The opposition activists reported government troops' shelling and airstrikes on a number of hotspots nationwide.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, activists' network, said that the armed rebels in Syria freed on Sunday as many as 120 Syrian Kurds, who were snatched by the rebels in northern Syria.

The latest incident indicates to what extent the Syrian Kurds have become involved in the fighting against the armed rebels, mostly in some northern parts of Syria, which are mostly dominated by Kurds.

Reports said that fighting between the rebels and the Kurds has been dragging on for a week after the rebels stormed a Kurdish area in the northern province of Aleppo.