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Arms depot blast kills 6 jihadists in NW Syria: monitor
BEIRUT, May 27, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Six jihadists were killed
Wednesday in an explosion that hit their arms depot in northwest Syria
while Russian warplanes flew overhead, a war monitoring group said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights did not say if
Russia was behind the blast that killed the non-Syrian jihadists
allied with the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uighur-dominated jihadist
group.
“We don’t know if it is the result of aerial bombardment or an
explosion inside the warehouse,” Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman
said.
If confirmed, it would mark the first Russian strike on the Idlib
region since a ceasefire went into effect in March.
Home to some three million people, the last major opposition bastion
in Idlib is controlled by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) alliance, led
by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate.
A Russian-backed regime offensive between December and March
displaced nearly a million people in the northwest, but at least
140,000 have returned since a ceasefire went into effect, according to
the United Nations.
The truce, which coincided with the novel coronavirus crisis, had
put a stop to the relentless air strikes by the regime and Russia that
killed at least 500 civilians in four months.
Wednesday’s explosion hit an arms depot in the al-Taybat village
near the town of Jisr al-Shughur, which is controlled by the
HTS-allied Turkistan Islamic Party, the Observatory said.
Russian warplanes were flying overhead at the time of the blast, it added.
Nearly half of Idlib’s population consists of Syrians displaced from
other parts of the country.
The war in Syria has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced
nearly half of the country’s pre-war population since it started in
2011.
While a ceasefire in Syria has reduced combat between rebels and
government forces, mercenaries from the two sides are still fighting
in Libya on behalf of their Russian and Turkish backers.
UN experts estimated that up to 5,000 Syrian mercenaries may be in
Libya, including “those fighters recruited by Turkey in support of
the” UN-recognised Government of National Accord.
BSS/AFP/MRU/1750hrs