Jihadists are starting to creep into #Syria's rebel factions and becoming more legitimate

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Jihadists are starting to creep into #Syria's rebel factions and becoming more legitimate http://thebea.st/Vo4YTp 

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Jihadists Are Creeping Into Syria’s Rebel Factions

Al-Nusra is steadily attacking government targets—and gaining support from rebels. Jamie Dettmer reports.

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A jihadist group in Syria, tagged a terrorist outfit by the Obama administration for links with Al Qaeda, is enjoying growing cachet from recent operational accomplishments on the battlefield—and is making progress in persuading other Islamist and jihadist brigades fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to join together.

Narciso Contreras/AP

Since announcing its formation in Syria in early 2012, Jabhat al-Nusra has launched more than 30 successful bombing attacks against mainly government military targets, often using suicide bombers, and the group has been in the vanguard of several recent full-scale rebel clashes with Assad forces, including the overrunning last month of a sprawling Army barracks and infantry training school five kilometers north of Aleppo.

Its first suicide bombing came nine months after the uprising against Assad began with a two-car bomb attack on Dec. 23, 2011—targeting the regime’s intelligence offices, killing at least 44 people, and wounding more than 160. According to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, it is likely that two female suicide bombers from Iraq carried out that attack.

Since then the pace of al-Nusra bombings has increased from one a month in the first three months of 2012 to four in April and then maintained an average of five to six a month thereafter.