The head of al-Qaeda’s operations in Syria has given its Iraq-based offshoot a five-day ultimatum to come to terms or be "banished", as the violent split in the Takfiri movement spirals out of control.

The head of al-Qaeda's operations in Syria has given its Iraq-based offshoot a five-day ultimatum to come to terms or be "banished", as the violent split in the Takfiri movement spirals out of control, The Telegraph daily reported Wednesday.

Abu Mohammad al-Golani, the leader of al-Nusra Front, issued a furious and aggressively-worded letter in response to the killing of al-Qaeda's envoy to the Syrian Takfiri movement, Abu Khalid al-Souri who is said to have been close to Osama bin Laden.

Souri was dispatched by al-Qaeda to try to end the in-fighting between al-Nusra and the rival Takfiri terror organization known as ISIL - the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant - which has spread its operations into Syria from Iraq. But at the weekend he was killed in a suicide bombing carried out by ISIL.

Golani released the video letter in which he addressed ISIL directly, and accused them of a raft of crimes beyond killing Souri.

"We say to his killers, may your hands and your act be damned," he said, calling on ISIL to allow religious mediators to help settle its differences with other opposition armed groups.

"We will wait five days for official response from day of this message and if you refuse then you know we have been patient for over a year," he stated, warning that if the group refuses what he called "the Law of God", his organization will banish the latter's ideology "even from Iraq."

Souri was born in Aleppo but after going into exile fought in Afghanistan where he knew bin Laden. He is thought to have been imprisoned in Syria but then released in an amnesty early in the uprising.