TURKEY DEPLOYS TROOPS TO SYRIA’S IDLIB FOR POTENTIAL GROUND OP.

Mon 27 September 2021:

The Turkish military has deployed more troops on the M4 highway south of northwestern Syria’s opposition-held Idlib and is prepared for any potential ground operation amid surging attacks by the Bashar Assad regime.

The deployment came just days ahead of the scheduled meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin this week in Sochi.

The Assad regime and its backer Russia have stepped up their attacks on Syria’s northwestern Idlib province since August as part of their weekslong campaign on the opposition bastion.

Residents, as well as opposition and military sources, said that Russian jets bombed villages around the city of Afrin Sunday, intensifying airstrikes over the past week on towns and villages held by Turkish-backed opposition groups.

Opposition sources said at least five fighters from a Turkey-backed faction were killed while at least 12 civilians were injured when Russian jets flying at high altitudes dropped ordnance, according to a network of plane spotters who document sightings of jet fighters.

The Russian bombing campaign has spread from Jabal al-Zawiya in Idlib province further northwest to the Afrin area near the Turkish border, with shelling from Syrian regime army outposts aided by Iranian-backed militias.

“Russia’s escalation has intensified this week and begun from Idlib province and now stretches to areas in northern Aleppo province along the border,” Major Youssef Hamoud, the spokesperson for the Syrian National Army (SNA), the main Turkish-backed opposition force, told Reuters.

The escalation comes days before Erdoğan is expected to meet Putin in Sochi Wednesday to discuss a deal reached last year that ended a Russian-led Syrian regime army offensive that displaced nearly a million people in Idlib, in the largest humanitarian displacement of the more than decade old conflict.

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