The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and official Syrian media said yesterday that government forces have taken control of several towns in Idlib Governorate, northwest of the country, amid a campaign that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has resumed to regain control of the last stronghold of the armed opposition in the country, and the Observatory said that six towns in the countryside Idlib has been under the control of the government forces for the past 24 hours.
Hundreds of thousands have fled Idlib in recent weeks, as air strikes by the Syrian and Russian forces intensify, with the aim of driving out the armed opposition from its last stronghold in the nearly nine-year-old civil war.
The observatory added that government forces backed by intense Russian air strikes advanced from the outskirts of Maarat al-Numan, an urban strategic center about 33 kilometers south of Idlib and located on a highway between Damascus and Aleppo, and the forces continued to advance into the area under the control of the armed opposition.
The Syrian news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying: "The actions of the army will not be reduced to responding to the sources of fire of armed terrorist organizations, but rather will include sweeping field operations that will not stop before the eradication of the remaining armed terrorism in all its names and forms."
"SANA" reported that "the Syrian army units have cleared the village of Al-Ghadfa from the last terrorist gatherings in it, achieving new progress on the axis of its operations east of the city of Ma`rat al-Numan in the southern Idlib countryside," explaining that the army has fought violent clashes with terrorists in the strategic vicinity of Wadi al-Dhaif.