Terrorists of Jabhat al-Nusra group resumed fire on the Syrian city of Saraqib and the M5 highway running through it, connecting Damascus and Aleppo, correspondent reports.
Artillery of SAR government forces is trying to suppress the firing positions of militants. The situation has sharply worsened after several hours of calm.
Terrorists on Wednesday night and Thursday night were trying to attack the city and enter it. The Syrian military succeeded in repulsing all attacks. However, the Damascus-Aleppo highway is still in the range of terrorist mortar attacks.
The situation in Syrian Idlib worsened after terrorists from the Hayyat Tahrir al-Sham group* (banned in Russia) launched a large-scale attack on the positions of Syrian government troops on 27 February. The Syrian army returned fire. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the shelling included Turkish soldiers who should not have been there.
As a result, 36 Turkish military men were killed and more than 30 wounded. Immediately after receiving information about the Turkish military casualties, the Russian side took measures to ensure a complete ceasefire by Syrian troops, and safe evacuation of the dead and wounded to Turkish territory was ensured. The Russian Defense Ministry stressed that Russian aviation was not used in the area.
Earlier Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Turkey was unable to fulfill several key obligations to solve the problems around Syrian Idlib. In particular, it did not distinguish the armed opposition, which is ready for a dialogue with the government as part of the political process, from terrorists. For his part, the Vice-President of Turkey, Fouat Oktay, made a statement that the country has fulfilled its commitments to Idlib.
In accordance with the agreement reached at the May 2017 talks in Astana (now Nur-Sultan) by representatives of Russia, Iran and Turkey, four de-escalation zones were created in Syria. The territory of three of these zones was taken over by Damascus in 2018. The fourth zone, located in the province of Idlib and parts of the neighbouring provinces of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo, remains outside the government’s control. In September 2018, Russia and Turkey agreed in Sochi to create a demilitarized zone in Idlib, where more than a dozen different formations are located.