Al Qaeda Affiliated Group Fighting With Rebels

The group is claiming responsibility for suicide attacks across Syria.

ALEPPO, Syria — A shadowy jihadist organization that first surfaced on the Internet to assert responsibility for suicide bombings in Aleppo and Damascus has stepped out of the shadows and onto the front lines of the war for Syria's cities.

Here in Aleppo, the al-Nusra Front for the Protection of the People of the Levant, widely known as the Jabhat al-Nusra, is fielding scores of fighters, some of them foreigners, in thebattle for control of Syria's commercial capital, a key prize in the bitter war of attrition being waged across the country.