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Jihadists kill 8 Syria troops near truce zone: monitor
BEIRUT, Nov 10, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – 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
Britain-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 clashes in which eight regime
forces were killed, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. Two
jihadists also died.
The de-militarised zone was announced by rebel backer Ankara and Damascus
ally Moscow in September to separate government troops from rebel fighters in
Idlib and adjacent areas.
Under the deal, the rebels were supposed to have removed all heavy weapons
from the buffer zone by October 10 but skirmishes have continued to pit
regime forces against jihadists and other insurgents on the ground.
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
Turkey averted it.
Aid organisations 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.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1727 hrs