A conservative Islamist rebel group said on Tuesday it would protect Syria's minorities, pressing a campaign in Western media to address concerns about one of the most powerful insurgent forces fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

Ahrar al-Sham is an ultra orthodox Salafist group and part of a military alliance including the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front that captured nearly all of the northwestern province of Idlib from Assad earlier this year.

But in two opinion pieces this month — one in the Washington Post and a second in Britain's Daily Telegraph — the group has distanced itself from al-Qaida's brand of cross-border jihadism. It has denied organizational ties and sharing its ideology.