South Front
Click to see full-size image. Via Twitter.
On June 17, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) assassinated a commander of al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the de-facto ruler of the northwestern Syrian region of Greater Idlib.
Syrian pro-government news sources said that the SAA monitored the movmeents of the commander, who was identified Hammam Abu Dujana, for a while, then targeted him with an anti-tank guided missile near the town of Kafr Nouran in the southern Idlib countryside. The commander was killed on the spot, along with one of his guards.
Abu Dujana was reprotly a senior commander in HTS’s Abu Bakr Brigade with a high experince in land mines and improvised explosive device.
Click to see original-size image. Via Twitter.
The commander was likely eliminated in response to recent violations of teh ceasefire in Greater Idlib, which was brokered by Russia and Turkey more than three years ago.
The SAA and its allis stepped up their strikes on Grater Idlib in recent weeks in what appears to be an attempt to deter HTS. Earlier this week, ten militants of the terrorist group were killed or wounded and two vehicles were destroyed when the army artillery shelled the outskirts of the town of Benin in the southeastern countryside of Idlib.
In the last few months, HTS and other terrorist groups in Greater Idlib escelated their attacks in an attempt to sabotage the Turkish-Syrian normlization process, which is sponsored by both Russia and Iran. These groups believe that the success of teh process could lead Ankara to withdraw its forces from the region, leaving them to face the SAA and its allies on their own.
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