AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): The Syrian military has retaken a key highway near the northern city of Hama as well as all the towns and villages surrounding it, besides killing dozens more Takfiris trying to enable resurgence of terrorism in the Arab country’s northern areas.
On Monday, the forces seized back of the highway linking the cities of Mahardeh and Suqaylabiyah near Hama, and all its adjacent towns and villages, including Karnaz, Tal Malah, al-Jalamah, Jabbin, Hayalin, and Sheikh Hadid, Syrian media outlets reported.
They also retook several other towns that had temporarily fallen under Takfiri control.
Around 80 more terrorists, including prominent ringleaders of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, were also eliminated during the forces’ operations on the outskirts of Hama as well as the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib, two other major northern cities.
Earlier, Syria’s state television had said that around 320 terrorists had been killed in the countryside of the three cities as part of joint strikes carried out by the Arab country’s troops and their Russian allies.
Monday’s strikes also led to destruction of 12 sites and ammunition depots used by the terrorists, besides resulting in shooting down of one of their drones.
According to local sources, around 15,000 volunteers have, meanwhile, joined the ranks of the Syrian army in Hama within hours.
The army is also being reportedly boosted by resistance and anti-terror fighters from regional resistance movements, including those hailing from neighboring Iraq.
Separately, Russian sources reported that the HTS was preparing to deploy toxic substances in Aleppo and Idlib -- a practice that repeatedly took place in the aftermath of the outbreak of Takfiri terrorism in Syria in 2014, and was used by the United States, the UK, and France as a pretext to take the Arab country under intense and deadly missile strikes on several occasions.
The sources said the materials had been transported to Aleppo and Idlib using ambulances operated by the White Helmets, a Western- and Israeli-backed so-called aid group.
Earlier this week, members of the HTS were reported to have overrun many government-controlled areas and killed dozens of Syrian soldiers in northern Syria.
Later, though, it was also reported that the Syrian army had thwarted large-scale terrorist operations in Aleppo Province through a preemptive strike.
Terrorist outfits and their Western allies launched a full-scale media campaign afterwards, trying to tarnish the Syrian military’s successful counterterrorism drive, including by reporting that the Syrian forces had withdrawn from Hama’s countryside.
The Syrian military, however, dismissed the reports later, considering them to be part of a “media war” aimed at painting Damascus’ anti-terror struggle in a bad light.
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