Syrian soldiers kill militant leaders

Source : Tehran Times

On Sunday, Syrian troops repelled a militant attack on a military checkpoint in the Muhardeh district of the western province of Hama, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported.

A local militant leader of the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra, identified as Suhaib Hassan al-Najeb, was killed in the process, SANA said.

Unrest has gripped Syria for nearly two years, and many people, including large numbers of security forces, have been killed in the turmoil.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that the government did not start the conflict and the militant groups were the ones killing Syrian citizens and destroying the country’s infrastructure.

On Sunday, a unit of the Syrian army also killed dozens of militants in the Palmyra district of Homs. Mansour bin Mufdi bin Mohammad al-Khaledi, a local and non-Syrian militant commander of the Jabhat al-Nusra group, was among the slain militants. Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011. Damascus says outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorists are the driving factor behind the unrest and deadly violence while the opposition accuses the security forces of being behind the killings.

Western states have been calling for Assad to step down. However, Russia and China are strongly opposed to the Western drive to oust Assad.

The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the armed militants are foreign nationals, mostly from Egypt, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia.