BALADI NEWS
Syrian state media said militants launched a major attack on regime forces in Idlib on Thursday that Russia’s defense ministry said killed up to 40 regime soldiers, though the account was disputed by a rebel official and war monitor.
Russia’s defense ministry said that militants had seized two settlements in one of the offensives, which began on Wednesday, forcing Assad's regime troops to abandon some of their positions in the southeast of the so-called Idlib de-escalation zone under rocket fire.
Syrian state media made no mention of troops casualties but said an attack that included car bombs and heavy gunfire early on Thursday had forced some of its forces to re-deploy.
Naji al-Mustafa, a spokesman for the National Liberation Front coalition of rebel groups, disputed the Syrian media and Russian government accounts and said no such assault had taken place on Wednesday or Thursday.
Mustafa said attacks had been carried out against regime forces earlier in the week as a response to stepped-up strikes against them in Idlib, but the area had seen no operations over the past 24 hours.
The Syrian Observatory war monitor also said there was no attack on regime forces in Idlib on Thursday but that it had recorded about 400 Russian and regime airstrikes on the area since Wednesday, part of a stepped-up assault since December.
Idlib is the last rebel-held swathe of territory in the country and hundreds of thousands of people in the area have fled in recent weeks amid heavy airstrikes by Russian and regime forces.