Syria Clashes Kill at Least 22, Highest Death Toll under Truce

At least 12 pro-government fighters and seven rebels were killed in pre-dawn clashes on Sunday morning in northwestern Syria. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the fighting took place in and around the village of Tanjarah, on the Sahl al-Ghab flood plain, which Islamist rebels have controlled since half-way into Syria’s civil war, now in its tenth year. A March 6 truce bartered on one side by Russia, which backs President Bashar al-Assad, and on the other by Turkey, which backs some rebel groups, ended a government offensive in the area that got underway in December. The offensive uprooted an estimated 1 million people, many of them returning to their homes after the cease-fire was struck, preferring to risk new fighting rather than the coronavirus, which is said to be making its way through camps established for displaced persons. The truce has been broken on several occasions involving mostly minor clashes usually involving ambushes, but also artillery and mortar bombardments.