Syria pushes back terrorist forces – media
The Syrian army has thwarted a terrorist offensive near the city of Hama and inflicted significant casualties on the insurgents, the state run SANA agency reported on Sunday, citing a military source.
A few days ago, the Syrian army came under a surprise attack spearheaded by the Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, an offshoot of Jabhat al-Nusra, and its allies. The militants managed to capture significant territories in the Idlib and Aleppo provinces, with some forces reaching as far as the center of Aleppo city.
According to the outlet, as part of the response to the offensive, which stretched along a front extending more than 100km, the government in Damascus deployed reinforcements to the area around the city of Hama in central Syria. Defensive lines were buttressed with “various means of weapons, personnel and equipment” that “confronted the terrorist organizations and prevented them from any breach of the area,” the source claimed.
SANA later reported, also citing a military source, that more government reinforcements had arrived in the area, adding that the terrorists were on the run. “Syrian-Russian warplanes are intensifying air strikes on the terrorists’ sites, headquarters, weapons and ammunition depots, leaving scores of casualties and deaths among the terrorists,” he said.
According to the report, fighting also took place near the towns of Qalaat Al-Madiq and Maardis, both of which are in close proximity to Hama. As a result, the Syrian army “was able to secure a number of areas,” including those two towns, while inflicting casualties on the terrorists and routing them, it claimed, without providing further details.
On Saturday, the Syrian General Command acknowledged that the army had lost dozens of service members killed, with numerous others wounded, adding that while the militants had managed to make their way into Aleppo, they had failed to establish fixed positions due to continuous bombardment. Syrian officials have also estimated the terrorist losses at around 1,000 troops.
Russia, which entered the Syrian conflict in 2015 at the request of the government of President Bashar Assad, also provided support to Damascus by targeting the attacking forces with airstrikes, claiming to have killed hundreds of militants.
Commenting on the latest escalation in Syria, the first over the last several years, Assad pledged that Damascus would defeat and destroy the terrorists “no matter how intense their… attacks are.”
