Syria will ‘eliminate’ terrorists and their sponsors – Assad

Syrian President Bashar Assad has vowed to “eliminate terrorists” who launched an offensive in the north of the country last week, along with their “sponsors and supporters.”

In a phone call with Badra Gunba, the acting president of Abkhazia, late on Sunday, Assad said his forces would “continue to defend the stability and territorial integrity” of the nation.

“Terrorism only understands the language of force, and that is the language which we will break and eliminate it with, along with whoever its supporters and sponsors are,” he stated, as quoted by Syria’s official Sana news agency. The Syrian leader said his military forces “are capable of striking at the terrorists and those who support them” with the help of the country’s allies.

The Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and allied militias launched an assault on government-controlled territory in northern Syria last Wednesday. The attack largely targeted Aleppo and Idlib provinces, with jihadists overrunning a number of villages and towns in the area before entering the city of Aleppo last Friday. Aleppo, which is the second-largest city in the country, had been under Syrian government control since 2016.

The Syrian Armed Forces, backed by Russian fighter jets stationed in the country, launched a counteroffensive on Thursday, and have been engaged in fierce clashes with terrorists to regain ground. According to a military source who spoke to Sana on Sunday, government forces have stopped the militants from advancing on the city of Hama in central Syria. They also successfully liberated several towns and villages in Hama province, including Suran, Halfaya, Qalat al-Madiq, and Maardas, the source added.

According to Syrian media outlets, nearly 1,000 terrorists have been killed during fighting in the past three days.

In a statement on Saturday, the Syrian General Command said the army had lost dozens of service members, but noted that HTS fighters had failed to establish fixed positions amid airstrikes by Syrian and Russian jets. It also said the militants’ attack had been “supported by thousands of foreign terrorists, heavy weapons, and a large number of drones.”

Damascus has long accused Western states and their regional allies of aiding terrorist groups operating in the region. In a piece published on Sunday, the Kyiv Post claimed that some Islamist groups that attacked Syria last week had been trained by the Khimik Group, a special forces unit of the Ukrainian military intelligence service (HUR). It reported that the unit, which has reportedly been active in Syria for some time, trained the terrorists on tactics developed during the ongoing conflict with Russia, including the use of drones.