At least 10 civilians and 35 combatants, mostly pro-regime forces, were killed yesterday in clashes and air strikes that erupted at dawn in northwestern Syria, a war monitor said.
The flare-up came as Russian-backed regime forces tried to retake two villages seized by militants and allied rebels earlier this month, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“Since this morning, the Syrian regime and allied fighters have launched five failed attempts to regain control of Jibine and Tal Maleh in northwestern Hama province,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
Syrian regime air strikes killed nine militants and rebel fighters, the war monitor said.
Ensuing clashes in the north of Hama province left 26 pro-regime forces dead, including eight who were killed in a mine explosion, the Observatory said.
In neighbouring Idlib, regime air strikes killed 10 civilians, including three children, the Observatory said. The strikes hit the towns of Maaret al-Numan and Al-Bara as well as the village of Al-Ftira, according to the war monitor.
The Idlib region of some 3mn  people is supposed to be protected from a massive regime offensive by a buffer zone deal that Russia and Turkey signed in September.
But it was never fully implemented, as militants refused to withdraw from a planned demilitarised zone.
In January, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate extended its administrative control over the region, which includes most of Idlib province as well as adjacent slivers of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo provinces.
The Syrian government and Russia have upped their bombardment of the region since late April, killing nearly 400 civilians, according to the Observatory.
Turkey said Friday that it did not accept Russia’s “excuse” that it had no ability to stop the Syrian regime’s continued bombardments in the last rebel bastion of Idlib. “In Syria, who are the regime’s guarantors? Russia and Iran,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told state news agency Anadolu in a televised interview.