Clashes Expected to Return to De-Escalation Zones in Idlib

FILE PHOTO: A man watches as smoke rises after what activists said was an airstrike on Atimah, Idlib province March 8, 2015. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man watches as smoke rises after what activists said was an airstrike on Atimah, Idlib province March 8, 2015. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah/File Photo
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Clashes Expected to Return to De-Escalation Zones in Idlib

FILE PHOTO: A man watches as smoke rises after what activists said was an airstrike on Atimah, Idlib province March 8, 2015. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man watches as smoke rises after what activists said was an airstrike on Atimah, Idlib province March 8, 2015. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah/File Photo

Recent military developments in southern Idlib suggest that clashes will renew between Syria’s regime forces backed by Iranian proxy militias and Syrian opposition factions.

This comes as the Syrian regime continues to send reinforcements to the area.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on regime forces dispatching new military reinforcements to their positions in Idlib’s rural areas. Buses carrying soldiers had arrived to Jabal al-Zawiya area in southern Idlib after they were relocated from the Hama countryside.

The spokesperson of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) military wing, Abu Khaled al-Shami, in an interview with the HTS-linked news agency, has expected that the Syrian regime forces, supported by Russia, would begin military action at Jabal al-Zawiya soon.

He added that the HTS is watching Jabal al-Zawiya, amid the mobilization of the regime forces and Russia on the outskirts of Jabal al-Arbaeen, Saraqib and the Kabana fronts in the northern countryside of Lattakia.

Activists in Idlib said they documented over 50 ceasefire violations last week committed by regime forces and Iranian militias. These violations, according to the activists, targeted inhabited neighborhoods and included rocket shelling of areas in southern Idlib.

The shelling, according to activists, has resulted in the displacement of over 1,000 families who were forced to flee to near-border camps and safer areas in northern Idlib.



Syria: Elaborate Military Tunnel Complex Linked to Assad's Palace

A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP
A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP
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Syria: Elaborate Military Tunnel Complex Linked to Assad's Palace

A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP
A fighter affiliated with Syria's new administration carries the decapitated head of an equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, brother of toppled president Bashar al-Assad, removed from the abandoned Republican Guard base on Mount Qasyun. Bakr ALKASEM / AFP

On the slopes of Mount Qasyun which overlooks Damascus, a network of tunnels links a military complex, tasked with defending the Syrian capital, to the presidential palace facing it.
The tunnels, seen by an AFP correspondent, are among secrets of president Bashar al-Assad's rule exposed since the opposition toppled him on December 8.

"We entered this enormous barracks of the Republican Guard after the liberation" of Damascus sent Assad fleeing to Moscow, said Mohammad Abu Salim, a military official from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant group in the alliance that overthrew Assad.

"We found a vast network of tunnels which lead to the presidential palace" on a neighboring hill, Salim said.

During Assad's rule, Qasyun was off limits to the people of Damascus because it was an ideal location for snipers -- the great view includes the presidential palaces and other government buildings.

It was also from this mountain that artillery units for years pounded opposition-held areas at the gates of the capital.

An AFP correspondent entered the Guard complex of two bunkers containing vast rooms reserved for its soldiers. The bunkers were equipped with telecommunications gear, electricity, a ventilation system and weapons supplies.

Other simpler tunnels were dug out of the rock to hold ammunition.

Despite such elaborate facilities, Syria's army collapsed, with troops abandoning tanks and other gear as opposition fighters advanced from their northern stronghold to the capital in less than two weeks,.

On the grounds of the Guard complex a statue of the president's brother Bassel al-Assad, atop a horse, has been toppled and Bassel's head severed.

Bassel al-Assad died in a 1994 road accident. He had been the presumed successor to his father Hafez al-Assad who set up the paranoid, secretive, repressive system of government that Bashar inherited when his father died in 2000.

In the immense Guard camp now, former opposition fighters use pictures of Bashar al-Assad and his father for target practice.

Tanks and heavy weapons still sit under arched stone shelters.

Resembling a macabre outdoor art installation, large empty rusted barrels with attached fins pointing skyward are lined up on the ground, their explosives further away.

"The regime used these barrels to bomb civilians in the north of Syria," Abu Salim said.

The United Nations denounced Bashar's use of such weapons dropped from helicopters or airplanes against civilian areas held by Assad's opponents during Syria's years-long civil war that began in 2011.