The recent escalation of violence is the most serious in Idlib province and nearby areas since Russia and Turkey negotiated a cease-fire in September. The shaky truce had averted a major government offensive on the last major rebel stronghold in Syria.
On Saturday, government forces were sending new reinforcements toward Idlib, including tanks, armoured personnel carriers and hundreds of troops.
Over the past weeks, government forces have bombarded rebel-held areas while al-Qaida-linked militants attacked army positions around Idlib killing more than two dozen troops and pro-government gunmen over the past week.
"The command's orders were given to bring these big reinforcements to respond to violations," a Syrian officer who asked that his name not be made public told The Associated Press. "We are waiting for orders to begin a military operation, God willing, soon."
The opposition's Syrian Civil Defense said 22 civilians have been killed and more than 60 wounded in airstrikes and shelling since Friday morning.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, reported more than 115 strikes against rebel-held areas on Saturday alone. It said six civilians were killed on Saturday raising to 67 the number of civilians and insurgents killed since Tuesday when the government began its new campaign.
Syria's state news agency SANA reported that government forces targeted positions of the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, the most powerful group in Idlib.
In violence in other parts of northern Syria, Turkey's defence ministry announced one Turkish soldier was killed and one lightly wounded in northwestern village of Tel Rifaat when Syrian Kurdish fighters shot at Turkish troops. The ministry said Turkish troops launched a counter-attack.
The attack was believed to have been carried out by the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, which Turkey considers a terrorist organisation with links to Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.
The attack came days after YPG militants carried out an attack in a Turkish-controlled region in northern Syria killing a soldier and wounding three others. 2016.
Government accuses Kurdish-led alliance of ‘treason’
Syrian government has accused Kurdish leaders of “treason” for organising a conference with allied Arab tribes to plot out the political future of territory under their alliance’s control.The Kurds and their Arab allies control Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), a vast swathe of the north and northeast, that makes up around a third of Syrian territory, much of which they captured in the long and costly campaign against the Islamic State group.
Buoyed by its recapture of most of the rest of Syria, Damascus is now demanding that alliance-held areas too return to central government control.
Weakened by the decision of its main ally Washington to withdraw most of its troops following the defeat of the last vestige of IS’s “caliphate” in March, the Kurdish-led alliance has opened talks with Damascus.
But its leaders are determined not to accept the negotiated surrender of a “reconciliation agreement” like those imposed by Damascus on various rebel groups, and on Friday convened a conference of Arab tribes to seek their support.
The state SANA news agency quoted a foreign ministry source as accusing organisers of the conference in the alliance-held but mainly Arab town of Ain Issa of “treason”.
It claimed that the meeting in a town “held by armed militia dependent on the United States and some European countries” had ended in “failure” as a result of a “boycott by most of the tribes”.
“Such gatherings are clear embodiments of the treason of their organisers, whatever their political, ethnic or racial allegiances,” the source added.
In his address to Friday’s conference, the leader of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Mazloum Kobani, said that Damascus would need to recognise the authority of the Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria as well as the “special status” of the alliance and its role in defending the region against IS.
He said there could be no going back to the situation before the civil war erupted in 2011 when the Kurds were denied any official recognition as a minority that accounts for some 15 percent of the population.
“It is not possible to reach a democratic and pluralistic Syria without full recognition of the rights of Syria’s Kurds,” he said.
The SDF has been cornered into seeking an accommodation with Damascus by two-pronged pressure from the looming US troop withdrawal and a longstanding threat by Turkey to send troops across the border to end the experiment in self-rule by Kurdish forces it regards as “terrorists”.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
U.S. has for years supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). But U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the pullout from Syria.
The Kurdish PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ considered the most effective fighting force against IS. The YPG, which make up the backbone of the SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
Sources:Fox News / Ekurd / AFP
No comments