Foreign fighters, extremists increasingly appearing on front lines in Syria's civil war September 19, 2012 - 3:33 PM TEL RIFAAT, Syria - The bearded gunmen who surrounded the car full of foreign journalists in a northern Syrian village were clearly not Syrians. A heavyset man in a brown gown stepped forward, announced he was Iraqi and fingered through the American passport he had confiscated. "We know all American journalists are spies. Now tell us what you are doing here and who you are spying for," he said in English before going on to accuse the U.S. of the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. "I really want to cut your head off right now," he added, telling his men, many of whom appeared to have North African accents, that this American kills Muslims. Increasingly, foreign fighters and those adhering to an extremist Islamist ideology are turning up on the front lines. On Monday, a U.N. panel reported a rise in the number of foreign fighters in the conflict and warned that it could radicalize the rebellion. A militant who fought alongside Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and is now the leader of a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda in South Yemen has struck a deal with the United States and Saudi Arabia to send 5,000 Al-Qaeda fighters into Syria according to reports out of the Middle East. Tariq al-Fadhli, jihadist leader of the Southern Yemen insurgency and a man personally trained by Bin Laden, has successfully negotiated with U.S. and Saudi officials to send 5,000 jihadist fighters via Turkey to aid Syrian rebels in the attempted overthrow of President Bashar Al-Assad,reports AlAlam. In a newspaper interview, al-Fadhli revealed that he had agreed to transfer 5,000 militants from the southern Yemen cities of Zanzibar and Jaar âto Syria in order to fight in war being waged by armed groups, including the Al Qaeda-linked groups against the Syrian regime.â http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/332902 http://www.startribune.com/world/170393156.html?refer=y&refer=y Obama bin Laden.