In force since March 6 in north-western Syria, the truce which had allowed the cessation of an offensive by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad against the Idleb region, the country's last great jihadist and rebel stronghold , is it still viable? 

After a three-month hiatus, several air raids, the first since the truce negotiated by Russia, an ally of Damascus, and Turkey, a border country which supports rebel groups, were carried out in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, in the northwest of the country. These strikes were attributed to Russia, the ally of President Bashar al-Assad's regime. 

The director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), Rami Abdel Rahmane, told AFP that "Russian raids targeted Tuesday before midnight and Wednesday at dawn" an area on the edge of the provinces of Hama, Idleb and Latakia. 

According to him, the Russian raids are aimed at "removing combatants from the M4 highway, as well as from certain villages in the Sahl al-Ghab region, where regime forces are deployed alongside the Russian forces". 

The Russian-Turkish truce agreement provides for joint patrols along this strategic highway, a real strategic axis separating the insurgent territories from the regions held by the regime, and which crosses the Idleb region to link Aleppo (north) to Latakia ( Where is). 

A province that is still beyond the control of Damascus

The province of Idleb which escapes control of the Syrian regime is mainly controlled by jihadists from Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (HTS, ex-Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda). Two other jihadist factions, the tiny Houras al-Din and the Turkistan Islamic Party, are also present.  

Although these are the first air raids since March 6, ground fighting had already resumed during the month of May in Idleb, where sporadic clashes and artillery fire regularly took place despite the ceasefire. fire. On May 10, 35 fighters from regime or allied militia forces and 13 jihadists, mostly from the small group Houras al-Din, were killed in northwestern Hama province, near Idleb, in fighting. 

President Bashar al-Assad, supported by the air strike force of his Russian ally, is determined to regain control of the entire province of Idleb.  

Since December, the offensive launched against her has allowed her troops to nibble large swathes of the rebel and jihadist enclave. And this, until taking control of half of the territory, with the capture of the cities of Maaret al-Noomane and Saraqeb, which escaped central power since 2012, but also important areas in the neighboring provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia. Syrian forces in particular seized the M5 motorway, which links Aleppo to Damascus, after capturing the last rebel stronghold located on the road, in the western suburbs of Aleppo. 

An offensive that has left some 500 civilians dead since December, according to the OSDH, and about 1 million displaced according to the UN, 120,000 of whom took advantage of the ceasefire to return to their homes. 

A previous agreement concluded between Ankara and Moscow in September 2018 providing for the establishment of a "demilitarized" zone, to avoid a new offensive by Damascus in the province, has remained a dead letter.  

With AFP

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