© Sputnik / Iliya Pitalev
On July 29, video footage showing an artillery strike on a position manned by militants in the northwestern Syrian region of Greater Idlib surfaced online.
The pinpoint strike was apparently carried out by the artillery of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) with support from a Russian military drone.
The strike was likely one of many that hit the town of Kafr Amma in the western Aleppo countryside earlier in the day. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based pro-opposition monitoring group, the strikes killed a member of the National Front for Liberation (NFL).
The monitoring group also reported strikes on the outskirts of the towns of Ma’arat al-Na’asan, al-Fatira, Safuhin, al-Barah and Kafr Uwayd in the southern Idlib countryside.
The NFL, which is made up of several Turkish-backed factions, is an ally of al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the de-facto ruler of Greater Idlib.
The Syrian-Russian artillery strikes were likely a response to recent violations of the ceasefire in Greater Idlib, which was brokered by Russia and Turkey more than three years ago. HTS and its allies escalated their attacks in recent weeks in an attempt to undermine the ceasefire.
The escalation is thought to be an attempt to sabotage the Turkish-Syrian normalization process which is sponsored by both Russia and Iran. HTS and its allies fear that an agreement between Ankara and Damascus could lead to a Turkish military withdrawal from the region. This would leave the door open for the SAA to resume ground operations there.
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