{"id":40450,"date":"2019-08-11T21:23:55","date_gmt":"2019-08-11T21:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40450"},"modified":"2019-08-11T21:23:55","modified_gmt":"2019-08-11T21:23:55","slug":"impoverished-gazans-lament-stagnant-livestock-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40450","title":{"rendered":"Impoverished Gazans lament stagnant livestock market"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"95\">\n<p>\nBEIRUT:\u00a0Syrian regime forces seized a town on the edge of Idlib province on Sunday, a monitor said, their first ground advance since resuming an offensive on the opposition-dominated enclave more than three months ago.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe region of northwestern Syria, which is home to an estimated 3 million civilians, has come under almost daily Syrian and Russian bombardment since late April.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe most recent fighting focused on an area straddling Idlib and Hama provinces, a war monitor said, and claimed dozens of lives on both sides.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cRegime forces seized the town of Al-Habeet, in Idlib\u2019s southern countryside, at dawn,\u201d said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe regime\u2019s latest gains were in the north of Hama province, which lies to the south of Idlib.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe area has escaped the control of Bashar Assad\u2019s regime since 2015 and is the last major bastion of opposition to his regime and its allies.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe capture of Al-Habeet, one of several strategic targets for advancing pro-regime forces, came after another night of deadly fighting, the Observatory said.<\/p>\n<p>\nAccording to the Britain-based monitor\u2019s tally, 70 combatants were killed on Saturday alone, 32 of them pro-regime forces. The remaining 38 were from the opposing ranks of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and allied opposition fighters.<\/p>\n<p>\nAbdel Rahman said another 27 combatants, nine of them regime fighters, were killed in early fighting on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>\nHe described Al-Habeet as \u201cthe first town in southern Idlib to be taken by the regime since the start of the escalation\u201d in April.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe town is seen as a stepping stone toward Khan Sheikhun, one of the main towns in Idlib and the target of some of the eight-year-old conflict\u2019s deadliest air strikes.<\/p>\n<p>\nTens of thousands of people have been displaced in recent weeks and aid groups have warned that an all-out assault on Idlib could turn the current humanitarian emergency into a catastrophe of proportions previously unseen.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe fighting is a violation of a deal which was reached by the battle\u2019s two main foreign brokers \u2014 Russia and Turkey \u2014 but was never implemented.<\/p>\n<p>\nRussia is Damascus\u2019 main backer while Turkey holds sway over some opposition and militant forces along its border. The deal\u2019s terms were never realistic but the agreement sealed in the Russian resort of Sochi in September 2018 staved off a fully fledged offensive that risks triggering the Syrian civil war\u2019s bloodiest phase yet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEIRUT:\u00a0Syrian regime forces seized a town on the edge of Idlib province on Sunday, a monitor said, their first ground advance since resuming an offensive on the opposition-dominated enclave more than three months ago. The region of northwestern Syria, which is home to an estimated 3 million civilians, has come under almost daily Syrian and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":40451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}