ENLARGE BEIRUT—A tenuous cease-fire in Syria unraveled further over the past few days, with rebel groups that signed on joining the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in a new offensive against regime forces near the northern city of Aleppo.
Amid the offensive in its fourth day on Monday, Nusra supporters were mourning a top figure in the group and nearly two dozen of his associates killed in airstrikes in northwestern Idlib province on Sunday.
Nusra supporters blamed the airstrike on the U.S., which has previously targeted the group's fighters in Idlib, its stronghold.
A spokesman for the American-led coalition that is mainly battling Islamic State wouldn't immediately confirm nor deny the allegation. Russia and the Syrian regime also conduct airstrikes on opponents in the area.
The truce has been imperiled by an escalation of regime airstrikes on rebel-held suburbs of the capital Damascus over the past week. Despite a rapidly rising toll of alleged violations, both sides appear reluctant to call off the agreement which has reduced violence and deaths after all.
"The cessation of hostilities agreement is about to take its last breath and effectively be declared finished," Riad Hijab, an opposition leader, warned in a letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday. Mr. Hijab heads the main opposition delegation to the Geneva peace talks.
Continuing regime restrictions on humanitarian assistance to several besieged rebel-held areas around Damascus are further straining the shaky truce. Residents of one such town, Madaya, said a sick teenager died Monday because of lack of medical care.
Regime airstrikes on a rebel-held community near Damascus on Thursday killed 33 people, almost half of them children, according to a tally by local emergency responders.
The Nusra Front is labeled a terrorist organization and excluded from the Geneva talks and the cease-fire, which began Feb. 27.
But many rebel groups, both Islamists and more secular factions, share territory and resources with Nusra Front. They often join the group in battles against common enemies such as the regime and Islamic State, which is also excluded from the talks.
The commander slain Sunday, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Firas Alsouri, once served as a personal emissary for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to recruit fighters in Pakistan, according to a biography of him released by the Nusra Front.
He was killed in the airstrike along with his son and at least 20 fighters from the group and another extremist faction known as Jund al-Aqsa, local opposition activists said.
There was no immediate comment by Nusra Front and Jund al-Aqsa. But on their social-media accounts supporters mourned the death of Mr. Alsouri, a Syrian national and veteran jihadist who once fought in Afghanistan.
Some opposition activists and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group, said it was possible the airstrikes that killed Mr. Alsouri were carried out by either Russia or the Syrian regime.
Since September, Russian warplanes have targeted all opponents of its ally President Bashar al-Assad, and continue to conduct sorties despite an announcement by Moscow last month that it was drawing down its forces in Syria.
The killing of Mr. Alsouri and the others followed the launch of a new offensive on Friday by Nusra Front and its Islamist rebel allies near Aleppo. They aim to recapture territory taken over this year by forces loyal to Mr. Assad and led by Iran and its regional militias, most notably Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Among the rebel groups that have joined Nusra in the fighting is the Islamist faction Ahrar al-Sham, which said it had largely abided by the truce until now.
The Nusra Front said it recaptured the towns of Al-Eiss and Khan Touman and killed at least 50 Iranian and Hezbollah fighters in the offensive, which it said has included multiple suicide bombings against pro-regime positions.
A spokeswoman for Hezbollah refused to comment. But the group's media arm Al-Manar reported that heavy clashes involving the Syrian army w ere ongoing in the area.
Previously released videos by Nusra Front's media arm identified Mr. Alsouri, which means "the Syrian" in Arabic, as its spokesman. He was believed to be in his late 60s and a native of the Damascus countryside. He served as an officer in the Syrian army in the 1970s and later took part in the Islamist-led insurrection against Hafez al-Assad, Mr. Assad's father and founder of the regime.
As that rebellion was crushed in the early 1980s, Mr. Alsouri moved to Afghanistan, where he trained jihadists fighting Soviet occupation at the time. He lived in Yemen from 2003 to 2013 before his return to Syria.
—Dana Ballout in Beirut contributed to this article.
Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com[7]
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