Illustrative image.
On December 23, militants of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (NSA) raided a position of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) near Abu Zindin crossing in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
The SNA, a coalition of Turkey’s proxies in northern and eastern Syria, said that five service members of the SAA were killed or wounded in the raid. However, pro-government news sources didn’t report any human or material losses.
The raid came following a series of similar attacks by al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the de-facto ruler of the northwestern region of Greater Idlib. The most recent attack, which took place on December 22, targeted two positions of the SAA near the villages of Maarat Mukhaws and Bureij in the southern Idlib countryside. The terrorist group said that 15 service members were killed or wounded.
Over the past month, the SAA redeployed several units, including the elite 25th Special Mission Forces Division, from Greater Idlib front to the outskirts of the Kurdish-held towns of Tell Rifaat, Manbij and Kobane in the northern Aleppo countryside.
The army’s surprise move was response to a threats of a new Turkish ground offensive against the Syrian Democratic Forces. While Damascus is still at odds with the Kurdish-led group, it rejects any further Turkish expansion in Syrian territory.
The Abu Zindin raid and the recent attacks in Greater Idlib, which violated previous Russian-Turkish agreements, were likely carried out to distract the SAA, or force it to pull its troops out from Kurdish-held areas in the northern Aleppo countryside.
