More than 50 rebels and jihadists have been killed in fighting in northeast Syria's Hasakeh province as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) overrun a town bordering Iraq.
"The number of Al-Nusra Front and rebel fighters killed in battles on Saturday against ISIL in the strategic town of Markada in the south of Hasake province has risen to 39," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.
The group says ISIL lost 13 of its fighters as it took total control of Markada.
"Markada is important because it provides ISIL with a supply route from Iraq into the road linking Hasake to Deir Ezzor," the Observatory said on Sunday.
Oil-rich Hasake and Deir Ezzor provinces border Iraq, where ISIL has its roots.
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ISIL has been fighting a war against rebels, including the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, since January across large swathes of western, northern and eastern Syria.
Once allied to ISIL, Syria's rebels and al-Nusra turned against the jihadists, angered by their quest for hegemony and abuses.
While ISIL has withdrawn from much of the west and north of Syria, it has held its ground firmly in the east, near the Iraqi border.
On another front, fighting raged on Sunday in flashpoints of Latakia province on the Mediterranean coastline, where rebels and al-Nusra Front began a surprise offensive against the army last week.
Latakia is the heartland of both President Bashar al-Assad's clan and his Alawite sect.
