Syrian, Russian strikes hit rebel-held areas

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Syrian and Russian airstrikes hit rebel bases in the northwest of the country, the defense ministry said on Wednesday, amid a recent escalation of violence. 

Syria “in cooperation with friendly Russian forces, carried out precise and qualitative air and missile strikes targeting the fortified headquarters of terrorist organizations,” the ministry said in a statement post by Syria’s state news agency SANA. 

The statement did not specify when the strikes were carried out but it comes at a time of an uptick in violence in rebel-held areas of the past week. 

It said that the operation was “in response to the repeated daily attacks” on residential areas in Hama province, and that bases containing weapons and ammunition were “completely destroyed.” 

The announcement comes a day after Russian airstrikes killed at least eight fighters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The war monitor claimed that 13 fighters and 16 civilians have been killed in Syrian and Russian strikes on rebel-held Idlib, where HTS is mainly in control, this week. 

Half of Idlib province, as well as parts of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces, are the last rebel-held bastions in the country after Assad seized back swathes of territory over the course of the brutal Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is the former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda and is the prominent force among dozens of different rebel factions operating in the area. It has been internationally recognized as a terrorist organization.

A ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey has been in place in northwest Syria since March 2020 but there has been a recent flare-up in violence. 

Russia has been Assad’s strongest ally throughout the war that initially began as an uprising turned into a brutal civil war.

Over 13 million Syrians have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than six million of which are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).