BEIRUT: Eleven Syrian soldiers were killed in the country’s northwest on Wednesday in separate attacks carried out by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, a war monitor reported.

“HTS fired shells and rockets at a Syrian military post, killing eight soldiers near Kafr Ruma in Idlib province,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It later reported that “three Syrian soldiers were killed by sniper fire” near Kafr Nabl in the same province, adding HTS members were also responsible. HTS is headed by ex-members of Sy­­ria’s former Al Qaeda franchise.

Syrian state media did not immediately report either attack.

About half of the northwestern province of Idlib and areas bordering the neighbouring provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia are dominated by HTS and other rebel factions.

The Idlib region is home to about three million people, around half of them displaced.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said that since the end of 2022, the militants “have intensified operations against regime forces in Idlib... in the context of a rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus”.

He said exchanges of fire and clashes between regime forces and the group’s factions had killed more than 60 people since the start of the year, most of them pro-regime forces. One of the militants killed was a French national.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2023