At least 56 militiamen killed in deadliest bombing in Idlib in half year of ceasefire

Burial of several of the militiamen killed in the bombings, this Monday in Kafr Tajarim (Syria) .DPA via Europa Press / Europa Press

At least 56 fighters from the Syrian Islamist militia Failaq Al Sham have died and more than 100 have been injured in bombardments by Russian fighters against a training camp in Idlib province, in northwestern Syria, according to information from the Syrian Observatory for the Human Rights (OSDH, located in England and with more than 200 informants on the ground).

The armed group is part of the National Liberation Front (FNL), a coalition of armed insurgent groups that backs Turkey in Syria.

These are the deadliest air strikes since Ankara and Moscow sealed a ceasefire last March in this region, today one third controlled by insurgent Islamist groups.

The bombing took place during the graduation of its new members in the Kafr Takharim camp, near the western border with Turkey, the Syrian Observatory said.

"The Russian escalation is a clear and continuous violation of the ceasefire signed with Turkey," Captain Naji Mustafa, spokesman for the FNL, told the Syrian website

.

According to Mustafa, the insurgents have already responded with artillery fire and mortar fire against Russian and Syrian troops loyal to Damascus.

After eight months of relative calm, Idlib's three million civilians fear that fighting will resume as the country plunges into a deep economic crisis whose scale dwarfs the health crisis.

In the last five years, and thanks to Russian air support, the troops loyal to Bashar al Assad have managed to recover 70 percent of this region turned into a mixed bag in which heterogeneous bags of insurgent militias have been progressively evacuated from the rest. from the country.

Fearing a new avalanche of civilians on its territory, which already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, Ankara managed to seal an agreement with Moscow last March and thus stop the ground offensive launched by Syrian regular troops.

With Iranian ground and Russian air support, the Syrian regular Army today controls more than two-thirds of the country's territory, except for part of Idlib and the northwest, which has been under the command of Kurdish forces.

The Idlib truce is one more in a long string of agreements in which the main stumbling block remains Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the alliance of jihadist groups that leads the Al Nusra front and a former local branch of Al Qaeda.

Both Damascus and Moscow brand the group as a terrorist, while the militias armed by Turkey have been unable to expel them from Idlib since they took control of the insurgent territory in 2019.

For its part, Washington also labels Al Nusra a terrorist group and the US Army claimed to have bombed Al Qaeda targets in the same province last Thursday with a drone.

The airstrike left 15 militiamen and five civilians dead, according to the OSDH count.

A decade of war in Syria has hardened the contest with the interference of half a dozen regional and international actors who defend their interests on the Syrian board.

The battle fronts have been entrenched in the country's borders, as well as the negotiations at the table in Geneva where the United Nations' fourth special envoy for Syria, the Norwegian Geir Pedersen, sits.

Conversely, both Turkey and Russia have exported thousands of Syrian militiamen as hired mercenaries to other regional conflicts such as Libya, where both powers are at odds, or more recently to Upper Karabakh.

More than half a million people have lost their lives in the fighting - about half are civilians - according to the NGO I am Syria.

There are also 5.6 million Syrians who have left the country in search of refuge, while half of the 18 remaining who remain within the territory of Syria have been displaced from their homes by violence.

With the military fronts largely silenced in the last year, the brutal economic crisis that plagues the country has been aggravated by the one in neighboring Lebanon and the strict economic sanctions imposed by the United States have become the main concern of the Syrians.