Last night, Turkish forces started removing earth mounds created by Idlib militant groups on the M4 highway in order to prevent joint Turkish-Russian patrols agreed in Moscow earlier in March.
الجيش التركي يزيل السواتر الترابية من على اتستراد "M4" (حلب – اللاذقية) بالتزامن مع انشاء عدة نقاط على الاتستراد وتعزيزات عسكرية.#سوريا #ادلب pic.twitter.com/dwzG7T1ziq
— Mohamad Rasheed محمد رشيد (@mohmad_rasheed) March 19, 2020
Under the deal, a buffer zone has to be created along the M4 highway covering the entire area from the west of Saraqib to the western countryside of Jisr al-Shughur. So far, this deal has resulted in little progress besides the establishment of the ceasefire regime. Terrorists keep positions in the ‘buffer zone” and the highway remains blocked by radicals. Russian-Turkish patrols have not been launched yet.
However, Turkish forces started conducting some efforts to change this situation only after 2 Turkish troops were killed in an IED attack on their convoy in western Idlib on March 19. The attack was conducted by Turkey’s lovely proxy groups operating in the area.
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However, the marital spat between Turkey and its al-Qaeda-linked proxies is in fact not so big. Here you can see Turkish service members alongside supporters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (the terrorist group linked with al-Qaeda) near the village of Nayrab.
