Syria Army Targets Militants’ Positions in Idlib, Hama

TEHRAN (defapress) – The Syrian army and its allies on Thursday launched retaliatory attacks against militants on the outskirts of Idlib and Hama, inflicting major losses on them.

News ID: 75746

Date: 21 February 2019 - 19:34

SANA’s reporter said that Syrian forces destroyed terrorists’ dens in the towns and villages of Kafr Nubbul, Hass, Basqala, Hish, Baboulin, Ma’asaran and Khan al-Soboul in Idlib.

In Hama, the forces targeted the positions of the terrorists in the areas of Hasraya, al-Arbain, al-Latamina and Kafr Zita in the northern countryside, the report added.

The areas are located in a planned buffer zone, which surrounds Idlib and also parts of the adjacent provinces of Aleppo and Hama.

Under a deal reached following a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in September, all militants should have withdrawn from the demilitarization zone by October 15.

However, al-Qaeda-linked Takfiri terrorists said they refuse to either leave the buffer zone or hand over their weapons.

Moscow believed that the 15-20 kilometer buffer zone would help stop attacks from Idlib-based militants on Syrian army positions and Russia's military bases in the flashpoint region.

Idlib and some surrounding areas are the last major bastions of Takfiri terrorists and anti-government militants in Syria, where the Syrian government has in recent months retaken much of the territory it had lost since the conflict erupted in the country in 2011.

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