Chairman of the Russian Duma International Affairs Committee Alexei Pushkov said the current split in the ranks of the Syrian militants deprives them of any chance to defeat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Pushkov tweeted earlier this Saturday that radical Islamists in Syria are now fighting the Free Syrian Army, with the split denying them any chance to defeat al-Assad, Voice of Russia reported. Almost 500 fighters have died over this past week in clashes between the Syrian armed opposition rebels and the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, involved with Al-Qaeda. The conflict between the armed opposition forces and the government troops has been raging in Syria since March 2011. According to the United Nations, over 100,000 have fallen victim to the standoff over the period.