Moments ago, the Syrian Arab Army’s 45th Regiment of the 1st Armored Division – in coordination with the National Defense Forces (NDF) and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) – began a new operation inside the strategic town of Al-Sirmaniyah after a successful weekend that included the capture of Fawru and Al-Bahsa in the Al-Ghaab Plains of the Hama Governorate.

According to a military source inside the city of Slunfeh (northeast Latakia), the Russian Air Force’s MI-24 Helicopter Gunships (alligators) started the operation with a powerful assault on the defensive positions of Ansar Al-Sham, Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham, and the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra”, destroying many of their military installations to pave the way for the Syrian Armed Forces to attack.

Following the aerial assault from the Russian Air Force’s choppers, the Syrian Armed Forces fired a flurry of mortar shells into Al-Sirmaniyah from two different sites (Jubb Al-Ahmar and Fawru); this was followed by a ground assault on the Islamist rebels frontline positions at the southern sector of this town in the Idlib Governorate.

Al-Sirmaniyah is strategically located in the Jisr Al-Shughour countryside; it was one of the first towns to fall after the Syrian Army pulled out of Jisr Al-Shughour and the village of Ishtabraq.