DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – The Syrian army continues targeting positions belonging to the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terrorist group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, in the country’s east under heavy retaliatory fire.
Government forces struck the terrorists’ hideouts in Bidama Village on the southern countryside of the city of Idlib to Sunday, the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.
Over the past several days, the army has ratcheted up its operations on the outskirts of Idlib and the city of Hama, both provincial capitals, in response to attacks by terrorists targeting military positions and towns lying within a de-escalation zone located inside Idlib Province.
On Saturday, the troops hit the same whereabouts near Idlib, killing and injuring a number of terrorists. Three days earlier, the forces had worked to choke up the terrorists’ transit routes during counterattacks in the villages lying around the cities.
In another development, at least five civilians, four of them children, were killed in Syria after a number of rockets hit a city in the country’s west-central province of Hama.
Syria’s official SANA news agency reported that the rocket attack on the city of Suqaylabiyah, launched by militant groups, killed four children and a woman and wounded at least six other children on Sunday.
The attack also inflicted material damage on civilian houses and properties, it added.
 Foreign-backed militancy, supported by the United States and many of its Western and regional allies, erupted in Syria in 2011. Terrorists overran large swathes of Syria’s territory before government forces retook almost all of them with help from Damascus’ allies.
The Syrian government has retaken almost all the territory that terrorist groups — including al-Nusra — had overrun in the country since a conflict erupted in 2011.
Under agreements between Syrian peace guarantors Russia, Iran, and Turkey, remaining terrorists were given safe passage into Idlib, where they remain pending decisions by the three countries.
Iran and Russia represent Damascus, and Turkey acts on behalf of the Syrian militants.
While agreements, including any ceasefire deals, apply to some terrorist groups in Idlib, terrorist groups such as al-Nusra are excluded from the process.