Syria takes on two terrorist bastions
Syrian forces upped the pressure on two of the last terrorist bastions in Syria, with airstrikes in Idlib province and a move to break a siege near Damascus Monday.
Syrian and Russian aircraft pounded targets in the northwestern region of Idlib, pressing a weekold operation targeting the last province in the country to escape government control, AFP reported.
“Airstrikes are continuing today on several parts of Idlib” province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Syrian forces launched an operation on the edge of Idlib province in the last days of 2017 and have retaken villages every day since.
After the collapse of the Daesh terror group in both Syria and Iraq late last year, President Bashar al-assad’s government is bent on restoring calm to the country by taking control of terrorist-held areas.
Idlib province, which borders Turkey, is almost entirely controlled by terror groups that are dominated by an outfit known as Hayat Tahrir al-sham (HTS) consisting mostly of terrorists from a former Al-qaeda affiliate.
Among the other groups present in the province are thousands of terrorists from Central Asian states and members of the Uighur ethnic minority of China’s Xinjiang Province.
An explosion on Sunday in the city of Idlib at a base for the group Ajnad al-qawqaz, made up of terrorists from the Caucasus that operates alongside HTS, left at least 34 dead, the observatory said. After shrinking to barely a sixth of the country at the height of the nearly seven-year-old conflict, the areas under government control now cover more than 50 percent of Syrian territory.
Another pocket where terrorists are still holding out however is Eastern Ghouta, a semi-rural area east of the capital Damascus that is home to some 400,000 people.
Terrorists led by the Jaish al-islam group had in recent days surrounded the army’s only military base in the area but the state news agency SANA said Monday the siege had been broken.