On Friday night, the Syrian Arab Army’s 45th Regiment of the 1st Armored Division – in coordination with the National Defense Forces (NDF) of Joureen and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) – reportedly captured 4 villages on the western rim of the Al-Ghaab Plains after a series of intense firefights with the Islamist rebels from Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham, the Free Syrian Army’s “Liwaa Suqour Al-Ghaab”, and the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra.”

According to a battlefield report from the National Defense Forces of Joureen, the Syrian Arab Army’s 45th Regiment and their allies imposed full control over the villages of Al-Kareem, Ramleh, Qabr Fidah, and Al-Ashrafiyah after they secured the imperative town of Safsafa in the Al-Ghaab Plains on Friday morning.

With the capture of these 4 villages, the Syrian Armed Forces are steadily building their protective wall along the Latakia Governorate’s eastern border with the Al-Ghaab Plains of the Hama Governorate; however, as long as the Islamist rebels control the strategic city of Jisr Al-Shughour in the Idlib, the Latakia border will not be safe.

Should the Syrian Armed Forces capture the imperative town of Al-Sirmaniyah at the northwestern part of the Al-Ghaab Plains, they will have positioned themselves at the southern flank of Jisr Al-Shughour.