How terrorist groups occupied Ma’arret al-No’aman city and two strategic camps in Ideb

More than 7 years have passed since the occupation of Ma’arret al-No’aman city in south Idleb by armed terrorist groups.

Now, the Syrian army units are just several hundreds meters away from this city, which is one of the biggest cities in Idleb province.

In October 2012, the armed terrorists affiliated to the so-called the ‘Free Army’ occupied the city of Ma’arret al-No’aman after 4 days of heavy clashes with the Syrian army units, which withdrew then towards the camps of Wadi al-Def and Hamdeyeh.

After the occupation of the city, the elements of the so-called the “Free Army” killed and arrested a huge number of residents, who were with the Syrian state and against the armed attack on their city.

Hundreds of families fled the city towards safe areas held by the Syrian army.

In 2013, the ISIS terrorists appeared in the city and they positioned in the east of Idleb, which was the hometown of then- ISIS Emir Hassan Abbod al-Sarmini, who was killed in an airstrike after he ran away to Raqqa.

Al-Sarmini was dismissed from Raqaa by the so-called ‘Syria Revolutionaries Front’ led by Jamal Ma’arouf, who is living now in Turkey after dismissing him alongside his men by al-Nusra Front.

The city of Ma’arret al-No’aman and its countryside became under the occupation of al-Nusra Front after dismissing the fighters of the so-called ‘Syria Revolutionaries Front’ in 2014.

Over 500 terrorists from al-Nusra Front and the so-called ‘Syria Revolutionaries Front’ were killed during the clashes.

The 2 strategic camps

As for the camps of the Wadi al-Dayf and al-Hamedeyeh,  the two strategic camps were besieged by terrorists twice. The first one occurred between October 2012 and April 2013, and it was lifted after an operation carried out by Syrian army where a big number of terrorists were killed.

The second siege was in 2014 and it lasted for 8 months. During this period hundreds of terrorists’ attacks were repelled by the army units, who were inside the camps.

The terrorists used new techniques to invade the camps. They dug tunnels towards the Syrian army’s positions and detonated them.

The fiercest blast was the one that took place when terrorists used 40 tons of explosives to detonate a tunnel, which  they dug in 2 months, in order to occupy the 2 camps. But they filed to reach their goal.

On October, 14, 2014, more than 5000 terrorists backed by hundreds of vehicles and car bombs launched a major attack on the 2 camps and they occupied them.

The attack on Wadi al-Dayf camp was launched by al-Nusra Front in cooperation with the so-called ‘Jond al-Aqsa”, while the attack on Hamdeyeh camp was launched by “Ahrar al-Sham’ movement .

The army units managed to withdraw from the two camps to Morek city in the north of Hama after other army units liberated several terrorist-held towns to secure the road for their withdrawal.

When the army units arrived on the outskirts of Khan Shiekhoun city,  Syrian soldiers came from Morek city to protect the units that were coming from the camps. Clashes erupted there for several hours and Syrian army warplanes paved the way for units, which spent 10 hours marching under bad weather,  to go ahead towards safe area.

Around 1000 Syrian officers and soldiers, who were in the camps, arrived to safe area . However, the bodies of dozens of Syrian soldiers are still in the camps.

For this reason, thousands of families are following up the Syrian army’ operations towards the camps.

Basma Qaddour