Syria’s Militants Give Tepid Support to Demilitarized Zone in Final Opposition Stronghold by Louisa Loveluck – Washington Post
Militants in Syria indicated tepid support for a demilitarized zone in the country’s final opposition stronghold, even as they appeared to defy an internationally brokered deadline Monday for their withdrawal.
The area surrounding the northern province of Idlib is home to about 2.5 million people, most of them civilians. Aid groups have warned that an offensive there could spell a humanitarian catastrophe.
A Sept. 17 deal between Russia and Turkey — key backers of Syria’s government and rebel forces, respectively — called for heavy weapons and Islamist militant groups to be pulled out of a roughly 13-mile-wide buffer zone.
But as the deadline passed, monitoring groups said that although a bloc of Turkey-backed rebels had withdrawn their weapons, the province’s most extreme militants were still there…