Fragile truce holds over n.west Syria

A fragile Russian-backed ceasefire was holding yesterday in Syria’s violence-plagued northwest, following months of heavy bombardment of the anti-regime bastion, a war monitor said. “Relative calm prevails” over the Idlib region, said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Regime and Russian warplanes have not been seen over Idlib since a unilateral ceasefire went into effect at 6 am (0300 GMT) on Saturday, he added. But the Observatory head did report some “skirmishes” in Idlib, where government forces have been battling jihadists of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance and allied rebel groups.

HTS, Al- Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate, controls almost all of Idlib as well as parts of neighbouring Aleppo and Latakia provinces. The area is one of the last holdouts of opposition to forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The region of some three million people has been hit hard by four months of bombardment by the regime and its ally Russia.

More than 950 civilians have been killed since the end of April, according to the Observatory, which relies on sources inside Syria for its information.