Militants Trying to Wreck Deal over Syria's Idlib Buffer Zone

“There are still Nusra terrorists in Idlib who are not stopping their attempts to wreck the implementation of the memorandum that was agreed between Russia and Turkey,” Interfax news agency quoted Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying during a news briefing in the capital Moscow on Thursday.

Zakharova added that terrorists were continuing to shell Syrian government troops in the South of the province and to the Northwest of Hama province.

Some 60 percent of the Northwestern province, home to three million people, is said to be controlled by members of the so-called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Takfiri terrorist group, which is a coalition of different factions of terror outfits, largely composed of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham Takfiri terrorist group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front.

Under the deal, which was forged in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi in September following a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, all armed opposition groups in the demilitarized zone, which surrounds Idlib and also parts of the adjacent provinces of Aleppo and Hama, were supposed to pull out heavy arms by October 10, and militant groups had to withdraw by October 15.

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