The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Aided by Russian airstrikes, Syria regime forces battle jihadis for key Idlib town and highway

Syrian pro-regime forces fought pitched battles Sunday with insurgents as they inched closer to a jihadi-run town in the northwestern province of Idlib, a war monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “fierce clashes” between loyalist forces, jihadis and allied rebels were taking place 1 km (0.6 miles) west of Khan Sheikhun.

The latest fighting broke out overnight Saturday to Sunday and has already killed 26 jihadis and allied rebels and 11 members of the pro-regime forces, the war monitor said.

The town of Khan Sheikhun lies on a key highway coveted by the regime.

The road runs through Idlib, connecting government-held Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo, which was retaken by loyalists from rebels in December 2016.

Pro-regime forces are deployed around 3 km (1.8 miles) from the road and have been advancing over the past few days in a bid to encircle Khan Sheikhun from the north and the west and seize the highway.

On Sunday they retook the village of Tel al-Nar and nearby farmland northwest of Khan Sheikhun “and were moving close to the highway,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

But their advance from the east was being slowed down due to “a ferocious resistance” from jihadis and allied rebels.

Syria’s former al-Qaida affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) controls most of Idlib province as well as parts of the neighboring provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia.

A buffer zone deal brokered by Russia and Turkey last year was supposed to protect the Idlib region’s 3 million inhabitants from an all-out regime offensive, but it was never fully implemented.

Regime and Russian airstrikes and shelling since late April have killed more than 860 civilians, according to the Observatory, which relies on sources inside Syria for its information.

On Sunday airstrikes by the Syrian regime and its ally, Russia, killed two people, including a child, in the south of Idlib, the Observatory said.

More than 1,370 insurgents and over 1,200 pro-regime forces have been killed since April, according to the monitor.

The violence has displaced more than 400,000 people, the United Nations says.

“Many of these people have been displaced up to five times,” the U.N.’s regional spokesman for the Syria crisis, David Swanson, told AFP on Saturday.

Syria’s conflict has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions at home and abroad since starting with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests in 2011.

Source: Aided by Russian airstrikes, Syria regime forces battle jihadis for key Idlib town and highway | The Japan Times