FILE - In this Tuesday Sept. 23, 2014 file photo provided by an anti-Bashar Assad activist group Edlib News Network (ENN), which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, Syrian citizens check a damaged house that they say was targeted by the coalition airstrikes in the village of Kfar Derian, a base for the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, a rival of the Islamic State group, between the northern province of Aleppo and Idlib, Syria. U.S.-led coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State group and other extremists in Syria have killed more than 860 people, including civilians, since they began in mid-September, a monitoring group said Wednesday, Nov. 12. (AP Photo/Edlib News Network ENN, File) (The Associated Press)
BEIRUT – Activists are reporting rare internal fighting in a rebel stronghold east of the capital Damascus.
The activists say the fighting broke out Friday and continued Saturday between residents and members of the Islamic Army in the suburb of Douma.
A Syria-based activist who goes by the name of Mohammed Orabi said the clashes began when residents attacked the storage units of influential merchants who dominate the local food distribution business to protest high prices.
Orabai and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said guards at the units opened fire, seriously wounding several residents.
The Islamic Army, a powerful rebel faction which tightly controls Douma, receives funding from some of these merchants, activists say, and is clashing with angry local residents in their defense.
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