|
Jihadists Kill 8 Syria Troops near Truce Zone
[AnNahar] Jihadists have killed at least eight Syrian government troops near a planned buffer zone around the country's last major rebel bastion, a monitor said on Saturday.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack took place late on Friday in the north of Hama province near the planned buffer zone around rebel-held territory in neighbouring Idlib. The attack was led by fighters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham  , an alliance led by Syria's former al-Qaeda branch which is the dominant force in Idlib, the Britannia-based monitoring group said."An assault by HTS targeted a Syrian regime position on the outskirts of the de-militarised zone" and was followed by festivities in which eight regime forces were killed, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. Two jihadists also died. Rebel factions have said they withdrew their heavy weapons from the zone but HTS and other hardline groups have refused to pull out their fighters. The deadly jihadist assault came hours after government troops killed 23 fighters of a formerly US-backed rebel group inside the planned buffer zone. Idlib and some adjacent areas are the last major rebel bastion in Syria, where the Russian-backed government has in recent months retaken much of the territory it had lost since the civil war erupted. It had threatened an assault on rebel territory around Idlib, which is home to some three million people, but the truce deal struck by Russia and ...Qatar's colony in Asia Minor.... averted it. Aid organizations had warned that a fully-fledged offensive on Idlib could spark the worst humanitarian catastrophe of the civil war so far. More than 360,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the conflict erupted with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011. Posted by: trailing wife 2018-11-11 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=527351 |