BEIRUT (AFP) – At least eight fighters were killed in air strikes early yesterday targeting a rebel base in Syria’s northwest, a war monitor said.
“Warplanes carried out air strikes on the western outskirts of Idlib city, targeting a military base belonging to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)… killing at least eight fighters,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Several other fighters were wounded in the strikes, with some in critical condition, said the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria. Extremist group HTS, led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate, controls swathes of Idlib province, parts of which form the last bastions of armed opposition to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
HTS also controls parts of the adjacent Latakia, Hama and Aleppo provinces.
An AFP correspondent at the site said the extremist group cordoned off the area after the strikes, which came shortly after midnight.
Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 after the government’s repression of peaceful demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global extremists.
On August 5, three family members, all civilians, were killed when warplanes struck the outskirts of Idlib city, the Observatory said at the time.
On June 25, air strikes killed at least 13 people including nine civilians in Idlib province, in what the Observatory said was the deadliest such attack on the country this year.
A member of the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uyghur-dominated extremist group, was among the four fighters killed in those strikes, which also wounded at least 30 civilians, the monitor had said.
Damascus has clawed back much of the territory it had lost to rebels early in the conflict.
