Rebels seize most of Syrian Golan Heights

Rebels from the Al-Nusra Front have seized most of the Syrian side of the Golan Heights from the Assad regime's troops, a monitoring group says.

Al-Qaeda-led rebels have seized most of the Syrian side of the armistice line with Israel on the Golan Heights, a monitoring group says.

Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and its allies launched a major offensive against government forces in Quneitra province last month, capturing the sole crossing point over the armistice line to the Israeli-occupied sector of the strategic plateau.

"The regime is on the retreat before the advancing rebels," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said on Saturday.

"The regime has now lost control of about 80 per cent of towns and villages in Quneitra province."

The rebels seized 45 UN peacekeepers on the Golan on August 28 and held them hostage until Thursday.

They are part of the 1200-strong UN Disengagement Observer Force, which monitors a 1974 ceasefire between Israel and Syria on the Golan.

Israel seized 1200 square kilometres of the territory during the Six-Day War of 1967, then annexed it in 1981 in a move never recognised by the international community.

Syria has never relinquished its claim to the territory and its return was the subject of peace talks with Israel in the 1990s and again in 2008.

Any prospect of the the talks' resumption has been torpedoed by the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime that erupted in March 2011 and swiftly escalated into a civil war that has claimed more than 191,000 lives.