FILE PHOTO
Tue 25 February 2020:
Nine Assad regime fighters were killed in Turkish shelling in northwest Syria, where Ankara-backed opposition fighters are fighting off advancing regime forces, a monitor said.
Syrian regime forces have since December clawed back parts of the last major opposition bastion of Idlib in violence that has displaced almost a million people.
Fighting raged on Monday, killing almost 100 fighters on both sides around the last opposition bastion, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
Those included 41 pro-regime fighters, as well as 53 opposition fighters.
Overall on Monday, the regime advanced rapidly in the south of the bastion but lost the town of Nairab along the M4 highway to the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in the southeast.
Turkish shelling in that area killed four regime fighters near Nairab and another five near the town of Saraqib to its east, the Britain-based Observatory said.
Opposition fighters had already broken back into Nairab last week after the regime seized it at the start of the month, but then lost it again several hours later.
Saraqib, which lies at the intersection of the M4 and another important highway the M5, has been under regime control since Feb. 8.
Earlier Monday, Russian airstrikes killed five civilians in the Jabal al-Zawiya area in the south of the bastion, the Observatory said.
In fighting on the ground, regime forces seized 10 towns and villages south of the M4, which links the coastal regime stronghold of Latakia to regime-held second city Aleppo, it said.
State news agency SANA, for its part, said “units of the Syrian army continued to progress in the south of Idlib” province.
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