Syrian Troops Close In on Strategic Mountain

Date: 18 February 2020 - 22:16

News ID: ۷۶۳۱۶

DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- Syrian troops pressed an offensive Tuesday on the country’s last major terrorist enclave where foreign-backed militants have been dislodged from vast parts of the territory.
The new advances came a day after President Bashar al-Assad promised that government forces would press on with their offensive.
"The battle for the liberation of the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib continues, regardless of all the hot air coming out of the north,” Assad said, in reference to warnings by Turkey.
In recent weeks, Syrian troops and allied forces have stepped up their offensive against Takfiri terrorists and their allies in Idlib and the neighboring province of Aleppo.
They have reconquered swathes of Idlib as well as key areas that have secured the strategic M5 highway connecting the country’s four largest cities as well as the entire surroundings of Aleppo city for the first time since 2012.
"We have won a victory over the fear they tried to instill in our hearts... but we are fully aware that this liberation is not the end of the war,” Assad said in a televised speech.
"But this liberation definitely does mean we have rubbed their faces in the dirt, as a prelude to their total defeat, which will come sooner or later.”
According to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, government forces made fresh gains in western Aleppo province on Tuesday.
"Government forces are trying to push towards the Sheikh Barakat mountain,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based monitoring organization.

If they capture the area, government forces will control a vantage point over vast swathes of land in Idlib and Aleppo provinces.
Deadly incidents between government forces and Turkey have raised tensions near Syria’s northern border, prompting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to threaten Damascus.
Russia said late on Monday Turkey had restarted joint patrols with the Russian military in northeast Syria after a two-week hiatus.
Turkey and Russia have jointly patrolled Syrian territory near the Turkish border since October. But Turkish forces had not shown up since Feb. 3, the Interfax news agency cited a Russian defense ministry official as saying.
A Turkish security source said on Feb. 7 that Ankara’s joint patrols with Moscow had been postponed because of weather conditions. Their suspension coincided with rising tensions between the two countries over Idlib.
Moscow last week accused Turkey of flouting agreements it had made with Russia on Syria’s nine-year-old war and of failing to rein in militants in Idlib it said were mounting attacks on Syrian and Russian forces.
"The latest joint Russian-Turkish patrol took place...,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement without elaborating.
A Turkish delegation was in Moscow on Tuesday for a second day of talks as the two countries tried to reconcile their differences over Idlib.