ANKARA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd February, 2020) Turkey is deploying military hardware to the border with Syria as another column of armored vehicles and tanks has reached the Reyhanli district of Hatay province, which borders Syria's Idlib, the official Anadolu news agency reported on Sunday.
According to the agency, the military hardware was dispatched there to "strengthen military units stationed in border areas."
In late January, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the Syrian government forces of violating the Russia-Turkey deal on the demilitarized zone in Idlib. He also threatened to "take all necessary steps, up to using military force," unless the situation in Idlib normalizes.
In September 2018, Moscow and Ankara agreed to set up a demilitarized zone along the contact line between the armed opposition and the government forces in Idlib. Not all militants have laid down weapons, with the province remaining a stronghold of various terrorist groups, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, banned in Russia).
On January 26, 2020, the Syrian army started an offensive in the west of Aleppo over militants' daily shelling of the city's residential areas. On January 29, the Syrian armed forces announced that they had liberated the strategically important city of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man, which had been under militants' control since 2012. Located at a junction of the Hama-Aleppo highway, the city used to be a terrorist stronghold and a transit point along supply routes in the south of Idlib province.
