THE Syrian army made further advances over the weekend in its current offensive, liberating several villages along a key waterway.

Al-Bahsa, in the north-west of Hama governorate, was retaken from the Nusra Front, Syria’s al-Qaida “affiliate.”

Unconfirmed reports said the villages of Atshan and Umm Haratayn, in the east of Hama, and the village of Sukayk, near Atshan in Idlib governorate, had also been captured.

Al-Bahsa lies in the fertile al-Ghab plain on the River Orontes, which flows north to the city of Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib governorate, a major objective of the offensive by government forces.

Troops found dozens of bodies of people apparently executed by the Nusra Front as they entered the village, which had just 1,000 inhabitants before the war, late on Friday.

The corpses indicated that the victims had been tied up and shot execution-style.

The army advance has been slowed by unexpectedly large numbers of US-made TOW anti-tank missiles in the hands of the Nusra Front and other terror groups.

It is unclear whether these were supplied to “moderate” rebels or whether the US or its regional allies are now flooding Syria with arms in a proxy war.

The Russian Defence Ministry said yesterday that its air forces in Syria had carried out 64 sorties in the past day,
targeting 63 sites in the Hama, Idlib, Latakia and Raqqa provinces.

It said an artillery system and a training base were destroyed in separate strikes in Idlib, and that attacks in Latakia province destroyed vehicles equipped with anti-aircraft weapons and mortars.

On Saturday, the ministry announced a similar number of sorties flown and targets hit.

He said signals intelligence reports indicated that the Islamic State (Isis) group was critically short on fuel and ammunition due to Russian air strikes on supply dumps, adding that demoralised militants were leaving the front lines.

Meanwhile, a military official quoted by Syria’s state-run SANA news agency said that two F-16s from the US-led coalition had violated Syrian airspace and targeted civilian infrastructure in Aleppo governorate, which is threatened by a new Isis offensive.

The unnamed official said the strikes had destroyed two power plants in the Radwaniyah area, east of Aleppo city, causing a blackout.