BEIRUT: Six members of Syrian regime forces were killed on Sunday in attacks on regime positions in the conflict-torn country’s northwest, the last main bastion of armed opposition, a war monitor said.
“Six regime forces, including two officers, were killed and two others wounded” in three attacks by extremist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham or HTS and allied factions, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The attacks targeted regime positions in Latakia province, said the Britain-based group which relies on a vast network of sources on the ground.
Swaths of Idlib province as well as adjacent parts of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo provinces are controlled by HTS, which is led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate. The war in Syria broke out in 2011 after the repression of peaceful anti-regime demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
With Russian and Iranian support, the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad has clawed back much of the territory it had lost to rebels early in the conflict.
Since 2020, a ceasefire deal brokered by Moscow and Ankara has largely held in Syria’s northwest, despite periodic clashes.
The 12-year-long war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions.
On Saturday, the Observatory said three family members, all civilians, were killed and six other people wounded when Russian warplanes struck the outskirts of the city of Idlib.
The monitor said Sunday that the strikes had targeted a former HTS base nearby, adding that the extremists had abandoned the site several weeks earlier.
