BEIRUT: Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters retook several areas Sunday from rebels near President Bashar Assad’s coastal heartland, a monitoring group and regime media said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 100 fighters in total from both sides have been killed in three days of intense clashes in the Sahl al-Ghab region of central Hama province. The area borders the Latakia province, a bastion of support for Assad and home to his ancestral village.

A rebel alliance including Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front, launched an offensive late last Monday against Sahl al-Ghab, in a push threatening a string of pro-regime Alawite villages.

The rebel alliance, Army of Conquest, seized more than a dozen strategic hilltops and other positions, including a power plant, before being pushed out by pro-government forces, the Observatory said.

“In the past three days, the army has been able to take back nearly 50 percent of the areas it had lost,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the pro-opposition Britain-based monitor.

The 72 hours of clashes killed at least 73 rebels and 42 regime forces, including Hezbollah fighters and members of the National Defense Forces militia allied with the government, he told AFP.

State media SANA said the army had destroyed “terrorist dens” in several areas of Idlib.

Regime aircraft conducted air raids on rebel positions Sunday while on the ground the two sides traded heavy rocker fire and mortar rounds, Abdel Rahman said.

Sahl al-Ghab also borders the province of Idlib to the northwest, a vast majority of which is under the control of the Army of Conquest.

The Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, is the faith to which Assad adheres.

Also over the weekend, the Nusra Front posted a video purportedly showing its capture last week of members of a U.S.-trained rebel force it accuses of aiding U.S.-led airstrikes against its fighters.

The Pentagon denied Thursday that any graduates of its training program for moderate rebels had been captured in Syria.

But the Observatory said that eight members of the 54-strong Division 30 unit inserted into Aleppo province in mid-July were being held by Al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front.

The video released by Nusra on its YouTube account Saturday appears to show at least some of the captured rebel fighters.

It depicts five men walking through a field in a straight line, hands behind their heads, supervised by one hooded man and one armed man.

One of the apparently detained men tells the camera he was recruited by the U.S., through intermediaries, to receive training in Turkey for a month and a half.

He identified himself as Zakaria Ahmad Safsouf from the northwestern village of Jbala, saying he was asked by a rebel commander to go to Aleppo, where he guarded a post. He said that after spending between 10 to 20 days in Aleppo, fighters were sent to Turkey for a 45-day training program that ended with each rebel being given an M16 assault rifle as well as $400 and 400 Turkish liras ($150).

“They then send them back to Syria to fight the Nusra Front,” the man said while standing in front of what appeared to be sand bags in a field. “There are senior American officers and telecommunications equipment so that [rebels] communicate with the coalition.”

A hooded man identifying himself as a Nusra member said the jihadi group had “cut the hand of the West and the Americans in Syria” by capturing the men.

“Their collaboration with the West is clear,” he said, accusing the detained men of helping U.S.-led airstrikes against Nusra positions.

While ISIS has been the main focus of the coalition bombing campaign, Nusra too has been targeted despite its fierce hostility to its jihadi rival.

In an online statement it published Friday, Nusra called Division 30 “agents of American interests and projects in the region.”

The same day, it launched an offensive against Division 30’s headquarters.

In a statement on Facebook, the U.S.-trained rebel group said five of its fighters had been killed and 18 wounded in the battle for the base.

Under the cover of U.S.-led airstrikes, the remaining forces withdrew to the Afrin area of Aleppo province, which is held by Kurdish militia.

At least 25 Nusra fighters were killed, the Observatory said.

Also Saturday, Syria’s state media and the main Kurdish militia in the country said government forces and Kurdish fighters have captured the last pocket that was held by ISIS five weeks after the extremists stormed the city and captured several southern neighborhoods.

“Out units were able to fully liberate the city of Hassakeh from ISIS’ mercenaries and were able to evict them from the city,” said a statement from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG.

Syria’s state news agency said Syrian troops “have wiped out that last den of ISIS’ terrorists” in Hassakeh.

Hassakeh had been controlled by Syrian troops and Kurdish militia until ISIS fighters stormed the city in late June.