Fighting near Damascus kills 72 rebels, troops

Fierce clashes between regime troops and rebels near an opposition stronghold east of Syria's capital Damascus has killed more than 70 combatants, a monitoring group reported on Sunday. Saturday's fighting in the East Ghuta region killed 28 jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Al-Nusra Front, 26 fighters from the Free Syrian Army, and 18 soldiers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Also killed were five so-called citizen-journalists -- members of the public who have taken to reporting on Syria's conflict in which more than 120,000 people have died since March 2011.