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On October 13, radical militants shelled the town of al-Bahsa and a base of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the northwestern Hama countryside with mortars and Grad rockets in a clear violation of the Russian-Turkish deconfliction agreement.
A source in the SAA told SouthFront that two soldiers of the SAA were killed and another one was injured as a result of the militant shelling. Furthermore, several civilians building in al-Bahsa were damaged.
The Turkish military claimed on October 10 that all heavy weapons, including mortar canons and rocket launchers, had been withdrawn from the demilitarized zone around the governorate of Idlib. However, the shelling on northwestern Hama indicates that Turkey had lied to protect the militants.
The October 13 shelling was not the first violation of the deconfliction agreement. A day earlier, the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation (NFL) destroyed a bulldozer of the SAA north of the city of Aleppo with an anti-tank guided missile (ATGM).
The SAA and the Russian Aerospace Forces may respond militarily to these violations. This will be especially likely if Turkey failed to force the radical militants to withdraw from the demilitarized zone before October 20.
