Twelve soldiers killed in jihadist suicide attack

Twelve Syrian soldiers were killed in a suicide attack carried out by a group of jihadist rebels in northwestern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Wednesday evening, September 4.

The observatory, which is based in Britain but has a large network of correspondents in Syria, said that “Members of the regime forces, including an officer, were killed in a suicide attack by the Hayat Tahrir al-Cham group [HTS] targeting regular army positions in northern Latakia province”This is the heaviest toll for the regime’s forces in a year, according to the OSDH.

HTS controls large areas of Idlib province, the last rebel stronghold in the northwest of the country, and parts of the neighboring provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia. More than five million people, most of them displaced from other provinces, live in these areas, which are outside the control of the Damascus government.

The HTS group, considered a terrorist organization by the Syrian regime, the United States and the European Union, regularly clashes with regular forces and their Russian allies. It is the main rebel organization active in northwestern Syria, but there are other groups, some of which are supported by Turkey.