Beirut (AFP) - A jihadist group in Syria has publicly executed and crucified nine men, eight of them rebels fighting both President Bashar al-Assad's regime and the jihadists, a monitor said on Sunday.

The report comes amid fierce clashes on the outskirts of Damascus between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is spearheading a major offensive in Iraq, and rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"ISIL executed eight men in Deir Hafer in the east of Aleppo province" on Saturday because they belonged to rebel groups that had fought against the jihadists as well as Assad's forces, it said.

ISIL then "crucified them in the main square of the village, where their bodies will remain for three days", the Britain-based monitor said.

Also in Aleppo province, a ninth man was executed and crucified in Al-Bab town near the border with Turkey.

ISIL first emerged in Syria's war in late spring last year and was initially welcomed by some Syrian rebels who believed its combat experience would help topple Assad.

But subsequent jihadist abuses quickly turned the Syrian opposition, including Islamists, against ISIL.

Rebels launched a major anti-ISIL offensive in January 2014, and have pushed them out of large swathes of Aleppo province and all of Idlib in the northwest.

However, ISIL remains firmly rooted in Raqa, its northern Syrian headquarters, and wields significant power in Deir Ezzor in the east near the border with Iraq.

Activists say the group's Iraq offensive and capture of heavy weapons -- some of them US-made -- appears to have boosted its confidence in Syria.

East of Damascus, "fierce clashes broke out early Sunday between rebels from the Army of Islam and ISIL near the town of Hammuriyeh", the Observatory said.

The Army of Islam is a major component of the Islamic Front, Syria's largest rebel coalition which has been fighting ISIL for months, but such fighting in Damascus province is unprecedented.

Regime soldiers and warplanes backed by Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah also pounded rebel positions near the capital with rockets and surface-to-surface missiles, said the Local Coordination Committees activist network.

Syria's war began as a peaceful protest movement in March 2011 demanding political change, but became an armed insurgency when Assad's regime unleashed a brutal crackdown.

Many months into the fighting, jihadists began to flock to Syria where upwards of 162,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in more than three years of conflict.

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Dozens missing after India building collapse

NEW DELHI (AP) — Police in southern India detained two construction company directors Sunday as rescuers using gas cutters and shovels searched for dozens of workers believed buried in the rubble of a building that collapsed during monsoon rains. It was one of two weekend building collapses that killed at least 22 people.

The 11-story apartment structure the workers were building collapsed late Saturday while heavy rains and lightning were pounding the outskirts of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state. Police said 31 construction workers had been pulled out so far and the search was continuing for more than a dozen others.

Four of the workers died on the spot and another seven succumbed to injuries in a hospital, said police officer George Fernandes.

Feeble voices were being heard from those trapped in the debris, said T.S. Sridhar, the disaster management agency commissioner. Rescuers used gas cutters, iron rods and shovels after cranes lifted concrete blocks to get to the survivors.

Nearly 90 contract workers were believed to have been in the basement of the structure to collect their weekly wages when it collapsed, Sridhar said, adding that the exact number of those trapped was unknown.

The collapsed structure was one of the two towers being built in the area, he said.

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A doctor checks the pulse of a woman worker who was pulled out from the rubble of a building that co …

"Removing debris is a major challenge. It may take two to three days to clear the rubble," said S.P. Selvam, who is heading the rescue operation.

Police officer Kanan said two directors of the construction company, Prime Sristi, have been detained for questioning as authorities began investigating the collapse. The officer uses one name.

Balaguru, one of the builders, said the structure collapsed possibly due to the impact of lightning.

"Usually, once the construction gets over we install the equipment to prevent the building from a thunder strike. It was nearing completion," the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Balaguru, who uses one name, as saying.

Earlier Saturday, 11 people died and one survivor was being treated in a hospital after a four-story, 50-year-old structure toppled in an area of New Delhi inhabited by the poor, said fire service officer Praveer Haldiar.

Most homes in that part of the capital were built without permission and using substandard materials, police officer Madhur Verma said.

Building collapses are common in India, where high demand for housing and lax regulations have encouraged some builders to cut corners, use substandard materials or add unauthorized extra floors.

In April last year, 74 people were killed when an eight-story building being constructed illegally in the Mumbai suburb of Thane in western Maharashtra state caved in. It was the worst building collapse in the country in decades.

Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama warned that "battle-hardened" Europeans who embrace jihad in Syria and Iraq threaten the United States because their passports mean they can enter the country without a visa.

Nearly 800 French citizens have spent time fighting in Syria's civil war, according to latest estimates, and Belgium says 200 of its people have done the same. Britain puts its number at 400.

Those holding French, Belgian and British passports -- along with a host of other European countries -- do not need visas to visit the United States, meaning they can potentially avoid scrutiny.

"We have seen Europeans sympathetic to their (militants') cause traveling into Syria and may now travel into Iraq, getting battle-hardened. Then they come back," Obama warned in an interview that aired Sunday on the US broadcaster ABC.

These combatants "have a European passport. They don't need visas to get into the United States," he told "This Week."

"Now, we are spending a lot of time, and we have been for years, making sure we are improving intelligence to respond to that.

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US President Barack Obama speaks on the economy at the Lake Harriet Band Shell in Minneapolis, Minne …

"We have to improve our surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence there. Special forces are going to have a role. And there are going to be times where we take strikes against organizations that could do us harm."

Fears about Europeans returning from militant action were underlined when Mehdi Nemmouche, a French-Algerian who fought alongside radical Islamists in Syria for more than a year, allegedly killed four people in a deadly shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on May 24.

Responding to Obama, Republican lawmaker Peter King said the president's don't go far enough.

"He should be very aggressive on this. Syria is our biggest threat," said King, a member of the Homeland Security Committee and chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

"Not only are there thousands of Europeans who have visas to get into the United States going to Syria, but there are 100-plus Americans over there in Syria right now."

Obama targets terror threat from Europe

Europeans who embrace jihad in Syria and Iraq are able to enter the U.S. without a visa because of their passport.
'Battle-hardened'

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the international community on Sunday to support Jordan in the fight against "Islamic extremism" and to back the independence of Iraq's Kurds.

"We need to support efforts by the international community to strengthen Jordan and support the aspirations of the Kurds for independence," Netanyahu said in a speech to the Institute of National Security Studies think-tank in Tel Aviv.

"I think it's our common interest to make sure that a moderate, stable regime like (Jordan) is able to defend itself."

His remarks follow reports in Israeli media that officials in Tel Aviv fear Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants may extend their control to areas of Jordan after seizing parts of Iraq in recent weeks.

In Syria, ISIL's fighters already control large swathes of territory in Deir Ezzor near the Iraq border, Raqa in the north, as well as parts of neighbouring Aleppo province.

In Iraq, they have spearheaded a lightning offensive, capturing sizeable territories in the north and west of the conflict-torn country.

Netanyahu also called for independence for Iraq's Kurdistan region, where Kurdish peshmerga security forces have mobilised in an unprecedented deployment to fight against ISIL.

The premier voiced concern over "the powerful wave triggered by ISIL, which could reach Jordan in a very short time."

He added: "We must be able to stop the terrorism and fundamentalism that can reach us from the east at the Jordan line and not in the suburbs of Tel Aviv."

US Secretary of State John Kerry hosted talks with Gulf allies and Jordan last week, emphasising the Hashemite kingdom's key role in helping to stem the regional gains of ISIL, who had earlier seized control of a Jordanian border crossing in Iraq.

ISIL on Sunday declared it had established a "caliphate", or Islamist state, straddling Iraq and Syria. The jihadists said the state would spread from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala in eastern Iraq, ordering Muslims in those areas to pay allegeance to the group.

Netanyahu: Back the independence of Iraq's Kurds

Israel's prime minister also asks the international community to support Jordan against "Islamic extremism."
ISIL concerns