‘Dozens killed’ as Syria regime forces battle jihadists

BEIRUT: Pro-regime forces were locked in heavy fighting with insurgents Sunday near a jihadist-run town in northwestern Syria, leaving dozens of combatants dead, a war monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “fierce clashes” between loyalist forces, jihadists and allied rebels were taking place one kilometre (0.6 miles) west of Khan Sheikhun in Idlib province.

The latest fighting broke out overnight Saturday to Sunday and has already killed at least 45 jihadists and allied rebels as well as 17 members of the pro-regime forces, the Britain-based monitor said. The town of Khan Sheikhun lies on a key highway coveted by the regime. The road runs through Idlib, connecting government-held Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo, which was retaken by loyalists from rebels in December 2016. Pro-regime forces are deployed around three kilometres from the road and have been advancing over the past few days in a bid to encircle Khan Sheikhun from the north and the west and seize the highway. On Sunday they retook the village of Tel al-Nar and nearby farmland northwest of Khan Sheikhun “and were moving close to the highway,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

But their advance from the east was being slowed down due to “a ferocious resistance” from jihadists and allied rebels. Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) controls most of Idlib province as well as parts of the neighbouring provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia.