SAA field commander inspecting Lattakia countryside for militants (Image Source: Sputnik News 2019)
Khaled Iskef
21st Century Wire
The areas of northern Syria are witnessing increasing frequency of confrontations between the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) on the one hand and extremist armed factions on the other, including new conflict taking place in the northern countryside of Lattakia province on the Syrian coast.
Fresh confrontations increased following the issuance of direct Turkish orders to their foreign fighter proxies – to head towards the axis of “Al-Kabina” in Lattakia countryside. This past week witnessed a series of hit-and-run battles, in light of the SAA’s attempts to control the village that is the gateway to the province of Idlib from the side of Lattakia countryside.
Al-Kabina axis witnessed fierce battles on Friday night after the extremist militants, led by al-Nusra front which is listed on the international terrorism list, attempted to move towards several points of the Syrian army, relying on heavy fire coverage through heavy rockets sent by Turkey to these factions for repeated attacks on the Syrian army, according to reports.
Despite the large number of extremist fighters involved in the attack and their use of various modern weapons, the Syrian army was able to counter the attack successfully and inflicted heavy casualties in the ranks of al-Nusra and its armed groups such as the “Islamic Turkistan Party” and the “Guardians of Religion”. Private sources confirmed that Syrian forces were able to capture a large number of the extremist factions’ militants who participated in the attack.
According to military analyzes of the situation in Lattakia countryside, the militant attacks on the governing hills of “Al-Kabina”, which is controlled by the Syrian Army, is an attempt by these militant factions to disperse the Syrian Army and distract it from its main objective of controlling the village and moving from it towards Idlib countryside, especially in light of its recent military operations against armed groups in order to drain their military capabilities.
The access to Idlib countryside, which is close to Lattakia countryside, is one of the Syrian army priorities recently. Especially in light of the fact that the militant factions rely on these areas as bases for carrying out attacks by drones either on the northern countryside of Lattakia or towards the Russian airbase of Hmeimim. It happened last Thursday when the militants carried out an attack towards the Russian base through drones, and they were handled by the Syrian air defenses 4 of them were shot down before reaching their target.
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