Turkey Sends Reinforcements To Syria's Idlib
Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published September 25, 2018 | 07:14 PM
Turkey beefed up its military positions in Syria's rebel bastion of Idlib Tuesday as the clock ticked down on a mid-October deadline to remove jihadists from the area.
Saraqib, Syria, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Sep, 2018 ) :Turkey beefed up its military positions in Syria's rebel bastion of Idlib Tuesday as the clock ticked down on a mid-October deadline to remove jihadists from the area.
Further complicating Turkey's task, a war monitor said hundreds of members of the Islamic State group were transferred by the regime to the northwestern region from eastern Syria.
Russia, the government's main ally, and Turkey, the rebels' top sponsor, agreed last week in Sochi on a plan meant to avert a large-scale regime offensive on Idlib.
The country's last major rebel stronghold is home to around three million people and the United Nations had warned an assault could have sparked a humanitarian disaster on a scale yet unseen in the seven-year conflict.
The deal reached in the Russian resort puts the onus on Turkey, which is now expected to get jihadists to hand over their heavy weapons and vacate a U-shaped demilitarised zone around Idlib.
Turkey already has 12 military "observation points" dotted across the province and on Tuesday an AFP correspondent saw a convoy of reinforcements after they crossed the border into Idlib.
Around 35 military vehicles travelled south down the main highway near the town of Saraqib after midnight.
The convoy was accompanied by pro-Ankara rebels of the National Liberation Front (NLF), who control part of the enclave on the Turkish border.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist alliance led by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, controls more than half of the rebel zone, while NLF fighters hold sway over most of the rest.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported that the government had transferred hundreds of rival IS jihadists to the area.
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