Is an armed rebel also a threat to civilians, or are loyalists the only target?
Yet armed rebel gangs have increasingly opted for ugly vengeance against regime supporters.
There are reports that groups of heavily armed rebel soldiers in Chad are closing in on the nation's capital N'Djamena.
Last January, the bank flew representatives of armed rebel groups from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Grenada in a chartered Boeing 737.
The opposition meetings in Istanbul come two days after a top military defector said armed rebel groups have aligned under the leadership of the Free Syrian Army.
To stress its disappointment, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the main group of armed rebel factions, shunned a subsequent meeting of Mr Assad's opponents in Cairo on July 1st.
The attacks occurred in parts of the country where armed rebel groups moved into areas considered to be pro-government but lacking in army or police protection, according to the U.N.
And the question is would any violent interaction between Libyan forces and armed civilians or armed rebel forces -- however you want to call them -- necessitate the intervention of the coalition force?
Our correspondent says the number of confrontations between the armed forces and the rebel groups, which the authorities call "narco-terrorists", is increasing.
It's not confined to a state's armed forces or to rebel groups.
The plan was a revolving presidency among former rebel leaders while armed fighters were to be turned into police or have weapons decommissioned.
One of the convicted RUF leaders, Issa Sesay, received a 52-year jail term and a rebel from the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) group, Alex Tamba Brima, was given 50 years.
He nevertheless remained a prominent figure in the armed uprising, regularly appearing with rebel fighters on the ground in Syria.
For its part, the government said Syrian armed forces inflicted heavy losses on rebel fighters in several hot spots across the war-torn country, SANA said.
One of them, Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba, whose rebel army was originally armed by Uganda, is being harried by the International Criminal Court, which is investigating allegations that his soldiers raped and killed hundreds of people in the north-eastern region of Ituri in 2003, and ate some to scare the rest.
As JEM is the most heavily armed and organised of the numerous Darfur rebel groups, their declaration of a ceasefire can only be good new for the region.
The country's biggest left-wing rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has not declared any truce for Christmas so far and correspondents say it is unlikely to do so.
Venezuela is threatening to stop acting as a facilitator in peace talks between the Colombian government and Colombia's biggest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) because of the meeting.
He was also said to have links with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) Marxist rebel group, Gen Naranjo said.
Mr. BABA GANA KINGIBE (A.U. Ambassador): Every one of the rebel groups in Darfur are better armed and logistically better supported than the African Union troops.
The latest ELN attack comes as Colombia's largest rebel group, the Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), holds peace talks with the government, aimed at ending five decades of an armed conflict that has killed an estimated 600, 000 people.
Now, various rival rebel factions and corrupt bits of the Russian armed forces are slugging it out for a slice of the oil money while indulging in gun-running and other rackets.
Shahadeh, the pro-government lawmaker, told CNN Arabic that the information available to lawmakers, based on intelligence reports, indicates "that the Syrian military air force only strike the locations of the terrorist armed groups, " the term the government uses for rebel forces.
The eastern city of Benghazi fell to rebel forces swiftly as Gadhafi blamed outsiders and "armed gangs" for the violence.
New non-Arab "Popular Defense Forces" have been recruited, trained and armed by the Sudanese government since late 2010 to force Zaghawa rebel groups out of a swath of the eastern Darfur region, the paper says.
According to a paper published last month by the independent monitoring group Small Arms Survey, violence has picked up of late since new non-Arab "Popular Defense Forces" have been recruited, trained and armed by the Sudanese government since late 2010 to force Zaghawa rebel groups out of a swath of the eastern Darfur region.
"Rebel groups from neighboring states, flush with money and armed with sophisticated weapons and communications are involved in the crime, " he said.
Mr Granda is described as the unofficial foreign minister for the Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the country's main leftist rebel group.
It said that "armed terrorist gangs", a term the government uses to describe rebel groups, had tried and failed repeatedly to capture the same facility in recent months.
BBC: Syria 'confirms' Israeli air strike but disputes target
The first anti-narcotics battalion, now operational, has been dispatched to the southern province of Putomayo, a region under the control of the biggest rebel group, the 15, 000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
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