Dozens of air strikes and shelling hit parts of the last swathe of Syrian territory still held by Islamist rebels in the northwestern part of the war-torn-country, in a possible prelude to a full-scale government offensive. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that dozens of strikes from helicopters and war planes had hit parts of Hama, Idlib and Aleppo provinces, killing at least 29 people. The three provinces in northwest Syria are the last major territories still in the hands of Islamist militias seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces recaptured the area around Damascus and the southwest earlier this year. It is important to note that the most powerful militia of these territories is the Jihadist group Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham, which has strong ties to al-Qaeda.
