DAMASCUS: Eight members of an extremist group were killed on Thursday in clashes with security forces in northern Syria, including three militants who blew themselves up.

“The clashes took place at a farm in the town of Maaret Naaman in Idlib province,” 330 kilometres north of Damascus.

“After a gunbattle which lasted an hour, an explosion was heard from inside the farm, where, it emerged, three members of the Takfirist group had blown themselves up,” the Sana news agency said.

“Five other members of the group were killed in the clashes,” it said. “Arms, explosives belts and explosives were confiscated.”

A spokesman for the Arab Organisation for Human Rights said that nine people were killed when helicopters fired at a building in Kafr Duma, near Maaret Naaman, containing a number of Islamists.

It was the latest in a string of reported incidents involving radicals, with the authorities announcing the launch of operations against a banned Takfirist movement.—AFP