5 months of security chaos in Idlib and its surrounding claim the lives of 320 Syrian and non-Syrian civilians and fighters of the factions and 80 of ISIS cells
Events of insecurity in Idlib Province and surrounding areas of the countryside of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia have completed the 5th consecutive month of escalation, which took the lives of tens of civilians and fighters, as well as Syrian and non-Syrian leaders, through assassinations that escalated since the 26th of April 2018, where the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored a gradual security chaos started by individual assassinations, kidnappings, murders and assassination attempts against fighters and members individually, and the largest concentration was on planting IEDs in the first weeks until the larger operations started to increase, and shifted to detonating booby-trapped vehicles and motorcycles, targeting by bullets, and planting IEDs on roads or sticking them to the targeted vehicles, or within the building or street be targeted, which has increased the number of casualties.
Security forces in Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham and the rebel and Islamic factions of Syrian and non-Syrian nationality have repeatedly failed to control this security chaos, despite their security operations that caused the arrest of cells belong to the “Islamic State” organization, and other cells responsible for kidnappings, assassination attempts, and assassinations, but these operations have not been able to achieve any complete results, but the cells have remained as it is wandering within the areas in which they have caused an uncontrolled security, where the cells are reducing their activity with each military operation, and get active again as security operation ends.
The Syrian Observatory documented casualties during whole 5 months of escalated security chaos, where the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented that it rose to 319, the number of people who were assassinated in Idlib countryside and both Aleppo and Hama countryside since the 26th of April 2018, they are the wife of an Uzbek commander and his son, in addition to 63 civilians including 9 children and 6 women, of who were assassinated through bomb explosions, IED detonations, shooting, abduction, murder and then throwing the bodies in remote areas, and 222 fighters of Syrian nationality belong to Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham, al-Sham Corps, the Islamic Movement of Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Izza, and other factions operating in Idlib, and 32 fighters of Somali, Uzbek, Asian, Gulf, Jordanian and Caucasian nationalities have been assassinated in the same ways, also the assassination attempts have injured tens of people with varying severity, while the factions stepped up their raids and operations against sleeper cells they accused of belonging to the “Islamic State” organization, also it rose to 80 at least, the number of members of ISIS and these cells who have been killed since the end of April 2018, of Syrian, Iraqi, and other non-Syrian nationalities, including at least 41 where executed by slaughtering them or directly shooting them, while the rest were killed during raids and exchange of gunfire between these cells and members of Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham in the areas of Salqin, Sarmin, Sahel al-Rouj and several other areas in the countryside of Idlib.
The last of which was what the Syrian Observatory monitored on the 20th of September 2018, where Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham carrying out a new batch of executions against people accused of being members of sleeper cells belong to the “Islamic State” organization; and responsible for carrying out assassinations within the provinces of Idlib, Aleppo, and Hama, where the Syrian Observatory monitored the execution of 5 people by Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham, the sources confirmed that they were executed in al-Zerba area in the southern countryside of Aleppo on charges of “belonging to ISIS cells”, where members of the Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham opened fire on them after being arrested earlier within the arrest operations against tens of people on these charges, which were occasionally intercepted by violent clashes between members of these cells and members of Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham, in addition to the executions that were carried out directly, or the mass targeting of sites and headquarters of these cells, where this is considered the first execution carried out within the Russian – Turkish demilitarized area, which has been specified in a recent Russian – Turkish agreement.