The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights posted a video on its official Facebook page showing rebel fighters gathered around two men, one of them was identified as Raqqah governor Hussan Jalili and the other as head of the Ba’ath party branch, Suleiman al-Suleiman.

This is the first time high ranking officials have been captured by anti-regime forces, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Huma Rights reported.

Syria opposition fighters clashed with pro-regime forces in Raqqah on Monday, taking “near-total control” of it while crowds toppled a statue of President Bashar al-Assad’s father, opposition sources and residents said.

Videos posted on the Internet showed the destruction of a statue of Hafez Assad, the former Syrian president and father of Bashar Al Assad. Footage showed the statue being pulled down and smashed.

The fall of the provincial capital signifies a potentially important turn in the two-year-old Syrian conflict as rebels do not claim to hold any other provincial capitals.

On Monday the civil war spilled into neighboring Iraq, where

armed men from Syria carried out an ambush in western Iraq killing 48 unarmed Syrian soldiers and nine Iraqi guards, the Iraqi defence ministry said in a statement on its website.

The soldiers crossed into Iraq from the Yaarabiya border crossing, the scene of heavy fighting on Saturday between rebels and troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, said Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Khalaf al-Dulaimi of the border protection forces on Monday, according to Al Jazeera.

Some 70,000 people have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011, the United Nations says.