On June 1, the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation (NFL) released three videos that show its fighters destroying heavy machine guns of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the northern Hama countryside.
The videos show two pick-up trucks armed with ZU-23-2 23mm machine guns and one armed with a DShK 12.7mm machine gun being destroyed, on May 31, near the towns of Kafr Nabudah and al-Hwaiz with anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMS).
The ATGM strikes were apparently carried out to support the failed attack on al-Hwaiz. The NFL and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups participated in the attack, which was led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former branch of al-Qaeda in Syria.
This extensive use of ATGMs by the NFL confirms a recent report of the Reuters news agency, which claimed that Turkey has resupplied Idlib militants with large quantities of guided missiles to help them to fend off the ongoing SAA military operation in northern Hama.
