On August 18, the Abkhazian Network News Agency (ANNA) released a video documenting the recent Syrian Arab Army (SAA) advance northwest of the key town of Khan Shaykhun in southern Idlib.
The video shows several airstrikes on positions, vehicles, artillery pieces, rocket launchers and gatherings of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies.
A complex network of fortifications and caves, which was captured by the army, can be also seen in the end of the 22-minute video.
In the last 48 hours, the SAA secured the villages of Khirbat Abidin, Hursh al-Tawilah and Mughr Hunta as well as the al-Nar hill. HTS and its allies suffered from heavy losses while attempting to stop the army’s advance.
Click to see full-size map.
Despite their heavy losses, the militants are still determined to oppose and sabotageany political agreement that would guarantee the safety of the people in Greater Idlib. This will likely force the SAA to go on with its operations in the region.
The video was uploaded 2 hours ago. The author is very fast with search in russian:)))))
Great work as always. ANNA news shows the world what is it true journalism.
Have not heard from the Jihadist trolls Jacob, Simon, Tonto yet. This is a plus ++++ :D
They are crying about the jihadi losses.
tonto needs attention, it is a great problem he has
No cease fire please. Let the Syrian and its allies to complete the job and all those that are on drugs should enjoy their drugs and avoid any sort of interference in Syria.
The Syrian army advance is so slow. I think it will take at least one year to liberate whole Idlib.
Maybe SAA this way is giving them a chance to evacuate Khan Shaikun by them selves. But I strongly doubt that. Wahhabis are stupid.
Soon there’ll be an exodus of refugees going back to Turkey from Idlib, when that happens the SAA will start liberating territory as fast as it’s vacated. If Assad can avoid causing too many civilian casualties during the Idlib operation, there’s less chance the UN, US, or EU will cry humanitarian catastrophe, which means they won’t have any excuse to stop the SAA and intervene with their damned airstrikes. The SAA just ignore the ceasefires now anyway, they’ve learnt the hard way, there’s no point abiding by a ceasefire if you’re the only one abiding by it, so they just break them as soon as they start now, even before the rebels do.
Syrian and Russian forces have opened corridors for rescuing civilians. They will not goto Turkey.
You have to get the rebels to agree to humanitarian corridors first, and they haven’t agreed to anything yet and won’t either, they need those human shields now more than they ever did. All the Arab civilians in the south will want to return to Syrian territory true, but none of the Turkmen population in the west of Idlib and north east of Latakia will go to Assad, they’ll make a bee line for Turkey instead. And the same goes for the ones living in the north of Idlib and to the west of Aleppo, none of them will want to stay with Assad, they’ll all head for the Turkish border. Why else has Erdogan sent 10,000 Turkish troops to his southern border recently, not just to where the Kurds are in the east and he’s threatening to invade, but the whole length of the southern border with Syria, that’s to stop people getting in I think, and we’ll find out soon enough.
bravo SAA :)
The SAA is being extra careful not to harm any civilians in these recent operations, and thanks to all that extra care they’re taking, the poor old UN hasn’t been able to cry out, “Assad’s bombing his own people”, “humanitarian disaster”, or “refugee crisis”, which means there’s absolutely no need or excuse for the UN, US, or EU to intervene. I don’t think there’s been more than 150 civilian casualties in all of Idlib, Hama, Latakia, and Aleppo during the last 3 months of fighting, and 99% of those civilian casualties were all well away from where the SAA has been fighting on the ground, and I’m also estimating that nearly 60% or more of those civilian deaths are attributable to Russian airstrikes anyway, not the SAAF or SAA. The UN says that 500 civilians have been killed in Idlib during the last 5 months of fighting, but I always halve their numbers as a matter of prudence, so I’d only agree that over the last 5 months of fighting [not 3 months] there might have been as many as 250 civilian deaths maximum, but not 500, and from that 250 civilian deaths I’d say at least 5 to 10% of them are attributable to the Kurdish ALF forces that frequently kill rebel civilians too, and another 5 to 10% of those civilians were also killed by the rebels themselves. So I don’t think the SAA or SAAF are doing too badly at all, their pace may have been slow to start off with, but the care they’ve taken not to harm innocent civilians is really paying off, they’re giving no one at all any type of excuse to stop them now, especially not the UN. Assad’s outsmarted the Turks by surrounding their OB posts and expelling the rebels nearby, giving the Turks no legitimate reason to remain where they are, and he’s also outsmarted the UN too by being extra careful not to kill too many civilians, and give them any excuse at all to try and halt his campaign. He’s not dumb at all, he’s a freaking genius, afterall he is a doctor, and you have to be pretty smart to become a doctor don’t you. Go SAA go, at first I wanted a swift shock and awe type campaign by the SAA and was bitterly disappointed it didn’t happen, but I’ve finally realized now that slow and steady will also win this race, and also not give anyone any excuses to interfere. And besides the pace the SAA is going right now isn’t so shabby anymore is it, so go SAA go, but go at the pace that actually wins the race, not just one leg of it.