Turkey Relocating Tahrir Al-Sham to Afrin on Sochi Agreement Pretext

TEHRAN (defapress)- The Turkish Army is rescuing the Tahrir al-Sham Hay'at (the Levant Liberation Board or the Al-Nusra Front) terrorists by transferring them from Idlib province to occupied Afrin in Northwestern Aleppo under the pretext of the recent agreement with Russia on Idlib, a local activist disclosed on Sunday.

News ID: 72620

Date: 23 September 2018 - 15:00

The Kurdish-language Hawar news quoted Aladdin al-Khaled, the head of Syria's al-Mostaqbal Party in al-Shahba region, as reporting that Ankara is transferring Tahrir al-Sham Hay'at from Idlib to Afrin under the Sochi agreement on Idlib in an effort to rescue them.

It further said that a number of Tahrir al-Sham terrorists have entered the village of Deir Balout in Jandaris region in Afrin under the Turkish intelligence forces' monitoring.

In the meantime, local sources in Afrin reported that the Turkish army and its allied militants have forced civilians to leave their residential units in the villages of Kokan Foqani, Kokan Tahtani and Dar Karah in Mobata region to settle family members of Idlib terrorists.

Also, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that the Ankara-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) has expelled almost 200 family members of Eastern Ghouta terrorists from a region in Afrin and moved them towards Idlib to pave the ground for sheltering the FSA members in Afrin.

On Monday, after three-hour negotiations between Turkish President Rajab Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin , Russia and Turkey agreed to create by October 15 a demilitarized zone in Syria’s Idlib province along the contact line between the Syrian government forces and the armed opposition. According to Ankara’s proposal, the armed opposition’s tanks, multiple launch rocket systems and other heavy weaponry are to be fully withdrawn from the area by October 10. The demilitarized zone will be controlled by mobile patrol groups of the Turkish military and Russia’s military police.

Idlib is the only Syrian province still controlled by illegal armed groups. In 2017, a de-escalation zone was established in the region, where militants reluctant to lay down their arms can move together with their families. According to United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, Idlib currently hosts about 10,000 militants from the Jabhat al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda terror groups. In case Damascus succeeds in restoring control over Idlib, it will bring large-scale military activities in Syria to an end.

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