SARAQIB: Turkey beefed up its military positions in Syria’s rebel bastion of Idlib on Tuesday as the clock ticked down on a mid-October deadline to remove jihadists from the area.

Further complicating Turkey’s task, a war monitor said hundreds of members of the militant Islamic State group were transferred by the regime to the northwestern region from eastern Syria.

Russia, the government’s main ally, and Turkey, the rebels’ top sponsor, agreed last week in Sochi on a plan meant to avert a large-scale regime offensive on Idlib.

The country’s last major rebel stronghold is home to around three million people, and the United Nations had warned an assault could have sparked a humanitarian disaster on a scale yet unseen in the seven-year conflict.

The deal reached in the Russian resort puts the onus on Turkey, which is now expected to get jihadists to hand over their heavy weapons and vacate a U-shaped demilitarised zone around Idlib. Turkey already has 12 military “observation points” dotted across the province, and on Tuesday a correspondent saw a convoy of reinforcements after they crossed the border into Idlib.

Around 35 military vehicles travelled south down the main highway near the town of Saraqib after midnight.

The convoy was accompanied by pro-Ankara rebels of the National Liberation Front (NLF), who control part of the enclave on the Turkish border.Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist alliance led by Syria’s former Al Qaeda affiliate, controls more than half of the rebel zone, while NLF fighters hold sway over most of the rest.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Turkish convoy headed to an “observation point” in the north of Hama province.

On Monday, the Observatory said the government had transferred hundreds of rival IS jihadists to the area.

The head of the Britain-based monitor, Rami Abdel Rahman, said they were brought from an area where IS still holds a few pockets near the Iraqi border in Deir Ezzor province. “Regime forces transported more than 400 IS fighters late Sunday from the desert near the town of Albu Kamal,” he said.

They arrived in the eastern countryside of Idlib at dawn on Monday, near areas where other jihadist groups are present, he said.

Abdel Rahman said the transfer came after days of negotiations and as the Syrian army with allied Iranian forces threatened an operation against IS.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2018