SOHR: Jihadists Kill Eight Soldiers In Northwest Syria
Eight Syrian soldiers were killed in the country’s northwest on Wednesday in an attack carried out by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham jihadist group, a war monitor reported.
“HTS fired shells and rockets at a Syrian military post, killing eight soldiers near Kafr Ruma in Idlib province,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
HTS is headed by ex-members of Syria’s former Al-Qaeda franchise.
Syrian state media did not immediately report the attack.
About half of the northwestern province of Idlib and areas bordering the neighbouring provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia are dominated by HTS and other rebel factions.
The Idlib region is home to about three million people, around half of them displaced.
With Russian and Iranian support, Damascus has clawed back much of the ground lost in the early stages of Syria’s conflict, which erupted in 2011 when President Bashar al-Assad’s government brutally repressed pro-democracy protests.
Despite periodic clashes, a ceasefire reached in 2020 by Moscow and Turkey — which supports anti-Assad rebels — has largely held in the northwest.
Source: The Barron’s news