Damascus: The Syrian army declared on Wednesday that it has recaptured a key rebel-held city in Idlib province.
The army recaptured the city of Maarat al-Numan, along with several other villages and towns in the province, Xinhua news agency reported.
The army added that the fight will continue until liberating all Syrian areas from terrorist groups.
Capturing Maarat al-Numan is a key step towards securing the Hama-Aleppo road as part of an agreement reached in Russia in 2018 that aims to secure the official road to Aleppo, which extends all the way south to the capital Damascus.
In 2011, Maaret al-Numan was one of the first towns in the northwestern province of Idlib to rise up against the Damascus government.
The following year, it was captured by rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule. It is the latest town to fall in a Russian-backed offensive on the Idlib region this year.
Since the Hama-Aleppo road is under rebel control, people have travelled to Aleppo through another extension of the road.
The army is now prioritising the recapture of the entire road between Hama and Aleppo, which will enable the travel movement to return to its pre-war time from Damascus in the south to Aleppo in the north without rerouting to other roads.
On Wednesday, army forces swept the town for booby traps and unexploded ordnance after all rebels were either killed or withdrew, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The town is home to a museum of Roman and Byzantine-era mosaics, which volunteers sought to protect with sandbags through years of war.
What remains of rebel-held territory includes more than half of Idlib province, as well as slivers of adjacent Aleppo and Latakia.
Fighting between government forces and the rebels also continued in the south of Aleppo province on Wednesday, the Britain-based Observatory said.
To the north of Maaret al-Numan, the front line had been pushed back to within 10 kilometres (six miles) of the town of Saraqeb, the next stop on the M5 highway, its director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The civil war has killed more than 3,80,000 people and displaced more than half the country’s population since it erupted following the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011. (Agencies)
