Damascus Gov't Not to Allow Idlib to Turn into Terrorist Stronghold

“Idlib is part of Syria, and it is natural for the Syrian government to fight terrorism in order to rid its nation from the scourge and establish full sovereignty over its soil,” Ja’afari said at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting in New York City, press tv reported.

Under a deal reached following a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi on September 17, all militants in a demilitarized zone, which surrounds Idlib and also parts of the adjacent provinces of Aleppo and Hama, were supposed to pull out heavy arms by October 17, and Takfiri groups had to withdraw by October 15.

The National Liberation Front of Syria is the main Turkish-backed militant alliance in the Idlib region, but the Takfiri Tahrir al-Sham Hay'at (HTS) terrorist group, which is a coalition of different factions of terror outfits, largely composed of the Jabhat Fatah al-Sham Takfiri terrorist group, holds a large part of the province and the zone.

The HTS, which is said to be in control of some 60 percent of Idlib province, has yet to announce its stance on the buffer zone deal.

Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terrorists have reportedly transferred banned chemical munitions to the northwestern Syrian city of Jisr al-Shughour.

It is estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 members of different factions of armed groups, which Syria, Russia and Turkey consider terrorists, are active in the volatile province, which is home to around three million inhabitants.

Russia believes that a buffer zone would help stop attacks from Idlib-based militants on Syrian army positions and Russia's military bases in the flashpoint region.

Ja'afari added that the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group “is targeting anything in Syria but not terror groups.”

 “We are surprised that the UN Special Envoy to Syria (Staffan de Mistura) has ignored the crimes of this coalition against Syrian people. The illegal US-led international coalition continues to perpetrate crimes in Syria, the last of which was in the villages of al-Sousa and al-Bubadran, where 62 civilians lost their lives,” the Syrian UN ambassador pointed out.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be ISIL's targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying ISIL.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday that as many as 3,222 civilians had been killed ever since the so-called US-led anti-ISIL coalition launched its aerial bombardment campaign in Syria more than four years ago.

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