Like a boomerang, the air strike that killed 33 Turkish soldiers on Thursday, February 27, in the province of Idlib, turns against the loyalist camp. Ankara's reprisals not only inflicted very heavy losses, human and material, on the Syrian army and its auxiliaries, but they allowed the anti-Assad rebels, who had lost much ground in recent weeks in their last reduced, to go on the offensive. This counterattack has so far received the implicit green light from Russia, protector of the Assad regime and arbiter of Syrian chaos, whose air force has remained behind since Thursday.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the rain of missiles dropped by artillery batteries and Turkish drones on pro-government positions left more than a hundred dead in three days. Among those killed were twenty-one pro-Iranian Shiite militiamen, members of the Zeinabiyoun and Fatemiyoun brigades, made up of Pakistanis and Afghans respectively. The men were buried Sunday in Iran.
The Lebanese militia Hezbollah, another crutch of the Syrian regular forces, returning to the battlefield after several months of eclipse, lost for its part at least twelve combatants. This is one of the bloodiest days for the movement, since its deployment in Syria, in support of regular troops, in 2012. The funeral of these men gave rise to a large gathering of activists and supporters of the party of God, Sunday, in the Shiite suburb of Beirut.
"Hundreds of Syrian army positions, tanks and installations have been successfully hit, commented on Danny Makki, an independent Syrian analyst, on Twitter. This is a disaster for the Syrian army, which has demonstrated a complete inability to counter trick drones and which now appears to be paralyzed in Idlib. " On Sunday, a column of armored vehicles, sent as reinforcements to the battlefield, was notably destroyed by shots from Turkish unmanned planes. Nineteen Syrian soldiers perished in the explosions.
Violent unrest
"We are obliged to conceal military vehicles and to minimize movement on the front lines, testifies the Russian journalist Evgeni Poddubnii, of the chain Russia24, embarked in the area of Idlib with the Russian troops. Turkish drones work day and night. Everything became harder. Unless the sky is cleared of these drones, it will be difficult for the Syrian army to hold ground. ”, added the special envoy, in a video posted on Telegram messaging.
