The Nusra Front, Syria's al-Qaida affiliate, is consolidating power in territory stretching from the Turkish border to central and southern Syria, crushing moderate opponents and forcibly converting minorities using tactics akin to its ultraconservative rival, the Islamic State group.

But while the Islamic State group gets most of the attention largely because its penchant for gruesome propaganda, the Nusra Front quietly has become one of the key players in the four-year civil war, compromising other rebel groups the West may try to work with while increasingly enforcing its own brutal version of Islamic law.

The White House on Monday said a controversial program exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden that covertly collects masses of telephone data will end if Congress does not expressly reauthorize it.

The program -- which secretly tracks when telephone calls are made, to whom and for how long -- was introduced after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Tunisia's National Bardo Museum is set to reopen to the public Tuesday after a jihadist attack that killed 20 foreigners, as the country looks to restore faith in its tourism sector.

Museum officials said the reopening, which will be marked with a ceremony, was "a message" to the gunmen who killed the tourists and a police officer there last Wednesday.

Syrian civil society groups appealed Tuesday for an international commitment to end the brutal war in their country as the only means to put the brakes on the spread of extremism.

"Stopping the violence requires two steps which we cannot achieve alone: an end to (President Bashar) Assad regime's barrel bombs and air strikes and negotiations between all Syrian groups and their international backers," 85 groups said in an emotive joint campaign.

Jordan and other members of the U.S.-led coalition targeting the Islamic State jihadist group are to train fighters belonging to "Syrian tribes", the Jordanian government spokesman said on Monday.

"Jordan and other nations in the coalition and in the region will jointly train... Syrian tribes to fight against the terrorist bands," Mohammad al-Momani said at a news conference.

An Israeli court on Monday sentenced an Arab citizen to 11 months in prison for traveling to fight alongside Syrian rebels in Israel's war-torn neighbor.

Several Arab Israelis have been arrested after returning from Syria, where armed opposition to President Bashar Assad is now dominated by jihadists, including the Islamic State group.

At least 12 people were killed and 30 wounded on Monday in rebel fire on government-held districts of Syria's second city Aleppo, state television said.

In a breaking news alert, the channel said children were among the casualties in "terrorist shelling of the city."

Head of the Mustaqbal bloc MP Fouad Saniora started on Monday giving his testimony at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, focusing on the ties between former Premier Rafik Hariri and the Syrian regime during the 1990s and early 2000s, as well as the influence the Syrian security apparatus wielded on Lebanon.

He said before the trial chamber at The Hague: “The Syrian regime sought to extend the term of then President Emile Lahoud, promising us that a 'new Lahoud' would emerge in the aftermath of the constitutional amendment.”

Syrian armed opposition groups, among them jihadists but also Western-backed rebels, have indiscriminately targeted civilians in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said on Monday.

In a new report, the New York-based group said it had documented dozens of opposition attacks against civilians in government-held parts of Syria.

The al-Qaida-affiliate al-Nusra Front reassured that it will not assault Lebanon or its army, stressing that they are not targets by the group.

Sources close to the Nusra Front stressed in comments published in al-Akhbar newspaper on Monday, that the group's direction is Syria and not Lebanon, pointing out that “Lebanon and its army are not included on the list of targets.”