Nine soldiers killed in northwest Syria rebel attack

BEIRUT: Nine Syrian soldiers and three jihadist fighters were killed on Friday, a war monitor said, in the second significant rebel attack on government positions in northwest Syria in a week.

Fighters of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, which dominates Syria´s last main rebel bastion, “infiltrated a Syrian army position... in northern Latakia province,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Another 12 soldiers and two HTS fighters were among those wounded in the assault, said the British-based Observatory, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.

HTS, which is led by the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, controls swathes of the northwestern Idlib province, as well as parts of the adjacent provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.

On August 26, fighters affiliated with the jihadists killed at least 11 soldiers in northwestern Syria when they detonated explosives placed in tunnels dug underneath army positions, before attacking them.

The ambush involving jihadists from the Ansar al-Tawhid group and the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) took place in the south of Idlib province, the Observatory said at the time.

Since 2020, a ceasefire deal brokered by Damascus ally Moscow and rebel-backer Turkey has largely held in Syria´s northwest, despite periodic clashes.

Syria´s civil war broke out in 2011 when the government´s repression of peaceful protests escalated into a conflict that drew in foreign powers and jihadists from abroad.

The conflict has killed more than half a million people since it broke out in 2011 and quickly escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and jihadist insurgents.